Dynamic Decimal Precision and Alignment in Clinical Trial Laboratory Summary Tables and Patient Data Listings

ABSTRACT When presenting descriptive statistics for laboratory parameters in clinical trial reporting, the experienced SAS® programmer frequently laments the disparity of numeric precision between varying parameters contained within the same dataset. Not only does this present an annoyance in summary tables, occasionally, supporting listings will require a ‘vertical’ structure in which the results from multiple parameters are stacked within the same column of the report. When faced with such a task, many programmers typically resort to a solution based almost entirely on an extended set of ‘if/then’ statements for assigning a particular presentation to a specific analyte(s) based on observational knowledge of the data at hand. In contrast, this paper demonstrates a simple yet effective method for dynamically presenting mixed laboratory results in both summary tables and vertical listings while preserving consistent decimal alignment as well as appropriate numeric precision.