does anyone have a tps to calcuate age

[Nancy McDaniel]

I am trying to produce a report from a HL7 ORU message and I would like to print out a patient’s age.  Does anyone have a tcl that does this and would be willing to send this to me?

thanks,

Nancy Hellyer

The Vancouver Clinic

nhellyer@thevancouverclinic.com

(360) 397-3222

Topic

[Rentian Huang]

Nancy,

Assuming we have 365 days a year, this should give you the age. It’s an Xltp.

Code:

proc xltGetAge {} {
   upvar xlateId       xlateId
 xlateInList   xlateInList
 xlateInTypes  xlateInTypes
 xlateInVals   xlateInVals
 xlateOutList  xlateOutList
 xlateOutTypes xlateOutTypes
 xlateOutVals  xlateOutVals

set dob [lindex $xlateInVals 0]
set age [expr {([getclock] – [clock scan $dob])/86400/365}]
set xlateOutVals $age
}

Hope this helps,

Sam   8)

[Jennifer Hardesty]

This method is extremely useful, except that I’ve had a problem with infant ages because they are less than 1.  I’ve had to remove the 365 so that I’m now calculating for days rather than years.

Now, I have a new issue:  When Admitting enters a DOB of 01/01/1901 (don’t ask me why they seem to do this — I think they do this on anon patients as policy), it causes a tcl callout error that says that the date is not calculatable and of course the message fails to be created.

Any ideas for a fix or work around?

Thanks in advance,

Jennifer Hardesty

Systems Interface Specialist

Maine Medical Center

hardej@mmc.org

[Charlie Bursell]

Just use the math associated with the clock command

[Jennifer Hardesty]

I’m not sure how to use the math with the clock command when “[clock scan $dob]” causes a tcl callout error when the dob is 01/01/1901.

The error itself reads: ‘unable to convert date-time string “19010101”‘

This functionality works fine with younger birthdates.

Jennifer Hardesty

Systems Interface Specialist

Maine Medical Center

hardej@mmc.org

[Jim Kosloskey]

Jennifer,

This might work.

In Unix (and maybe other Operating Systems as well) apparently Tcl will only calculate back to 12/31/1902.

For every year prior to 1902 I guess you could subtract 31536000 seconds from a clock scan of 01/01/1902 (which returns a negative number) to give you additional full years – or just subtract the dob year from the current year if the dob year is less than 1902.

Of course that is not sensitive to when in a year someone’s age turns over which might be an issue depending on how accurate this needs to be for folks over a hundred years old.

However, if this is truly a bogus date (that is 01/01/1901 ALWAYS represents a bogus date), then I would test for that date and report the age with something that catches the attention of the user to indicate a bogus date was used.

BUT – you really could have someone actually born on 01/01/1901 as a patient – what impact does that present?

Not much help but some thoughts.

Jim Kosloskey

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

[Cesario Perez]

Todays date: 20071029 – 19010101 (birth date)= A, then divide A by 10000 giving your age. Do not round your answer. Use the integer result with no decimal result.

[Charlie Bursell]

I agree the date math functions go only back to 1902.  If you *REALLY* want to get into this take a look at this web page:

http://wiki.tcl.tk/3189.html

I think you will find that age calculation can be much more difficult than it appears at first.

[Author]

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