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These functions determine which items in a vector can be considered (the start of) a new episode, based on the argument episode_days. This can be used to determine clinical episodes for any epidemiological analysis. The get_episode() function returns the index number of the episode per group, while the is_new_episode() function returns TRUE for every new get_episode() index, and is thus equal to !duplicated(get_episode(...)).

Usage

get_episode(x, episode_days, ...)

is_new_episode(x, episode_days, ...)

Arguments

x

vector of dates (class Date or POSIXt), will be sorted internally to determine episodes

episode_days

required episode length in days, can also be less than a day or Inf, see Details

...

ignored, only in place to allow future extensions

Value

  • get_episode(): a double vector

  • is_new_episode(): a logical vector

Details

Dates are first sorted from old to new. The oldest date will mark the start of the first episode. After this date, the next date will be marked that is at least episode_days days later than the start of the first episode. From that second marked date on, the next date will be marked that is at least episode_days days later than the start of the second episode which will be the start of the third episode, and so on. Before the vector is being returned, the original order will be restored.

The first_isolate() function is a wrapper around the is_new_episode() function, but is more efficient for data sets containing microorganism codes or names and allows for different isolate selection methods.

The dplyr package is not required for these functions to work, but these episode functions do support variable grouping and work conveniently inside dplyr verbs such as filter(), mutate() and summarise().

See also

Examples

# `example_isolates` is a data set available in the AMR package.
# See ?example_isolates
df <- example_isolates[sample(seq_len(2000), size = 100), ]

get_episode(df$date, episode_days = 60) # indices
#>   [1]  8 20 30 31 41 14 26 24 14  7 41 41  5 19 44 29 34 15 40 42 43 16 45  8  6
#>  [26] 10 37 42 32  9 36 18 19 42 28 19 29 20 46 27  1  2 42 39 11  4 12 36 13 18
#>  [51] 17  6 31  8  1 38 46  8 25 17 27 31  3 27 10 18 29 29 24 16 44 17 33 10 25
#>  [76] 36  2 23  7 44 42 12 46 45 44 34  2 17 38 21 22 35 22 25 32 39 43 30 35 11
is_new_episode(df$date, episode_days = 60) # TRUE/FALSE
#>   [1]  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE
#>  [13]  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE
#>  [25]  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE
#>  [37] FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE
#>  [49]  TRUE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE
#>  [61] FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
#>  [73]  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
#>  [85] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE  TRUE  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE
#>  [97] FALSE FALSE FALSE FALSE

# filter on results from the third 60-day episode only, using base R
df[which(get_episode(df$date, 60) == 3), ]
#> # A tibble: 1 × 46
#>   date       patient   age gender ward  mo           PEN   OXA   FLC   AMX  
#>   <date>     <chr>   <dbl> <chr>  <chr> <mo>         <sir> <sir> <sir> <sir>
#> 1 2002-10-20 F35553     51 M      ICU   B_STPHY_AURS S     NA    S     NA   
#> # … with 36 more variables: AMC <sir>, AMP <sir>, TZP <sir>, CZO <sir>,
#> #   FEP <sir>, CXM <sir>, FOX <sir>, CTX <sir>, CAZ <sir>, CRO <sir>,
#> #   GEN <sir>, TOB <sir>, AMK <sir>, KAN <sir>, TMP <sir>, SXT <sir>,
#> #   NIT <sir>, FOS <sir>, LNZ <sir>, CIP <sir>, MFX <sir>, VAN <sir>,
#> #   TEC <sir>, TCY <sir>, TGC <sir>, DOX <sir>, ERY <sir>, CLI <sir>,
#> #   AZM <sir>, IPM <sir>, MEM <sir>, MTR <sir>, CHL <sir>, COL <sir>,
#> #   MUP <sir>, RIF <sir>

# the functions also work for less than a day, e.g. to include one per hour:
get_episode(c(Sys.time(),
              Sys.time() + 60 * 60),
            episode_days = 1 / 24)
#> [1] 1 2

# \donttest{
if (require("dplyr")) {
  # is_new_episode() can also be used in dplyr verbs to determine patient
  # episodes based on any (combination of) grouping variables:
  df %>%
    mutate(condition = sample(
      x = c("A", "B", "C"),
      size = 200,
      replace = TRUE
    )) %>%
    group_by(condition) %>%
    mutate(new_episode = is_new_episode(date, 365)) %>%
    select(patient, date, condition, new_episode)
}
#> Error in mutate(., condition = sample(x = c("A", "B", "C"), size = 200,     replace = TRUE)):  In argument: `condition = sample(x = c("A", "B", "C"), size = 200,
#>   replace = TRUE)`.
#> Caused by error:
#> ! `condition` must be size 100 or 1, not 200.

if (require("dplyr")) {
  df %>%
    group_by(ward, patient) %>%
    transmute(date,
      patient,
      new_index = get_episode(date, 60),
      new_logical = is_new_episode(date, 60)
    ) %>% 
    arrange(patient, ward, date)
}
#> # A tibble: 100 × 5
#> # Groups:   ward, patient [94]
#>    ward     date       patient new_index new_logical
#>    <chr>    <date>     <chr>       <dbl> <lgl>      
#>  1 ICU      2004-05-04 022060          1 TRUE       
#>  2 Clinical 2006-07-21 059414          1 TRUE       
#>  3 Clinical 2002-05-14 077552          1 TRUE       
#>  4 Clinical 2003-10-01 0DBB93          1 TRUE       
#>  5 ICU      2009-05-08 0DBB93          1 TRUE       
#>  6 ICU      2007-06-21 0E2483          1 TRUE       
#>  7 Clinical 2012-09-03 107DD1          1 TRUE       
#>  8 Clinical 2010-11-01 119392          1 TRUE       
#>  9 Clinical 2007-08-10 122506          1 TRUE       
#> 10 Clinical 2009-08-14 146F70          1 TRUE       
#> # … with 90 more rows

if (require("dplyr")) {
  df %>%
    group_by(ward) %>%
    summarise(
      n_patients = n_distinct(patient),
      n_episodes_365 = sum(is_new_episode(date, episode_days = 365)),
      n_episodes_60 = sum(is_new_episode(date, episode_days = 60)),
      n_episodes_30 = sum(is_new_episode(date, episode_days = 30))
    )
}
#> # A tibble: 3 × 5
#>   ward       n_patients n_episodes_365 n_episodes_60 n_episodes_30
#>   <chr>           <int>          <int>         <int>         <int>
#> 1 Clinical           65             13            38            50
#> 2 ICU                25             10            18            25
#> 3 Outpatient          4              3             4             4

# grouping on patients and microorganisms leads to the same
# results as first_isolate() when using 'episode-based':
if (require("dplyr")) {
  x <- df %>%
    filter_first_isolate(
      include_unknown = TRUE,
      method = "episode-based"
    )

  y <- df %>%
    group_by(patient, mo) %>%
    filter(is_new_episode(date, 365)) %>%
    ungroup()

  identical(x, y)
}
#> [1] FALSE

# but is_new_episode() has a lot more flexibility than first_isolate(),
# since you can now group on anything that seems relevant:
if (require("dplyr")) {
  
  df %>%
    group_by(patient, mo, ward) %>%
    mutate(flag_episode = is_new_episode(date, 365)) %>%
    select(group_vars(.), flag_episode)
}
#> # A tibble: 100 × 4
#> # Groups:   patient, mo, ward [95]
#>    patient mo           ward       flag_episode
#>    <chr>   <mo>         <chr>      <lgl>       
#>  1 955371  B_STPHY_AURS ICU        TRUE        
#>  2 0E2483  B_ESCHR_COLI ICU        TRUE        
#>  3 119392  B_STPHY_CONS Clinical   TRUE        
#>  4 A26106  B_ESCHR_COLI Clinical   TRUE        
#>  5 557266  B_STPHY_HMLY Clinical   TRUE        
#>  6 5DF436  B_STPHY_AURS ICU        TRUE        
#>  7 501361  B_ESCHR_COLI Clinical   TRUE        
#>  8 195736  B_STPHY_AURS Outpatient TRUE        
#>  9 904485  B_STRPT_ANGN ICU        TRUE        
#> 10 842593  B_STPHY_CONS ICU        TRUE        
#> # … with 90 more rows
# }