question about patient/turmor model

[Bruce Riddle]

By law, NHSCR is required to receive within 45 days of diagnosis a rapid report with a limited set of information. The final definitive report is due within 180 days of diagnosis.

A single transmission from a reporter hospital could contain both rapid and definitive reports. The rapids and definitive must be split apart before the cases can be processed. Current practice is to batch a single month of transmissions into a SAS program and use NAACCR Item 2090 (date complete) to create a file by hospital of definitive reports to load into the main database. A second database of all rapid reports by month is also created. With the XML model, this is not a longer a viable operation.

In the NAACCR Patient tumor, tumor, etc. model, how do you pull out the rapid report on a single tumor and just get a definitive patient/tumor record? Or the opposite, how do you pull out the definitive report on a single tumor and not pick up the rapid report?
Case studies:
a) Patient/tumor where the tumor is just a rapid report.
b) Patient/tumor/tumor where one tumor is a rapid report, and one tumor is a new definitive report
c) Patient/tumor/tumor where one tumor is a rapid report and one tumor is a previously reported definitive report
d) Patient/tumor/tumor where one tumor is a previously submitted definitive report, and one tumor is a new definitive report
e) Patient/tumor/tumor where both tumors are new definitive reports
I have been experimenting with the SEER DataViewer trying to write code to do this.
Thoughts?
Thanks.

[Isaac Hands]

I am not sure how to do this in the SEER data viewer, but if you want to maintain your current SAS-based workflow, you can flatten the XML file as either a pre-processing step or automatically using the SAS XML macro – the first option listed here:
https://github.com/imsweb/naaccr-xml/wiki/7:-NAACCR-XML-and-SAS

[Bruce Riddle]

Issac,
I tried the XML macro and it does not scale well for monthly
production. Very awkward on an in a multi-file production run.
Bruce

[Isaac Hands]

Thanks for the feedback, is this something where we could change the way the macro works – maybe it could operate on a directory of files instead of an individual file – or are you saying that using any macro XML conversion would be too difficult to use in SAS?

[Bruce Riddle]

I have no issues with SAS macros; I use them. This is still early in the game and I have a limited amount of test data. Fabian pointed out today that a NAACCR 18 flat file I received from a national vendor does not exactly meet the “specifications” to be used in SEER DataViewer. I am powerless on the issue to get the vendor to “fix” the files. I assume the XML files I will receive will also be imperfect. I am trying to test out case processing scenarios that address the issues I outlined above and allow me to manage and track the inflows and characteristics of data received. I am only one voice. The current structure of the SAS Macro is awkward and limited for use in processing up to 40 files in a batch with imperfections in the data. Some of this is my own idiocentric ways of work with data; I never use long complex variables names in large data sets. Who wants to learn 791 variable names? I strongly prefer the NAACCR Item numbers. Right now the tools being developed seem to focus on one file at a time. I do not want to touch one file unless it is so bad it needs work. I want to work on files in batches with tools that allow me to add supplemental information to track the who and when. Before anyone writes yet another program, we thought is required and tools in development need to be released for testing and evaluation.

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