st: Binary variable (create a flag) in STATA and deleting variables

["mafotb@gmail.com" <mafotb@gmail.com>]

Dear all,

I have two questions:

1. I want to create a binary variable (create a flag) in STATA

I’ve got a file cancer.dta
- containing list of medical codes (e.g. 88Zuu00, 25C5.00) that mean a
person has a cancer.

I have also a second file health_record.dta
- with different variables about patient. One of the variables are
medical codes (for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and of course
CANCER).

I want to create a binary variable (flag) that would indicate if a
person has cancer.

So far I did something like this:

gen cancer=.
replace cancer = 1 if medicalcode=="88Zuu00"
replace cancer = 0 if medicalcode !=" 88Zuu00"
replace cancer = 1 if medicalcode =="25C5.00" | medicalcode == "25C5.01" | etc.

But etc. in this case means that I have to reaped the command for over
200 cases. Is there a quicker, more sufficient way?

2. Will deleting a variable that I created just to count other
variables affect their result? Like in Excel when I delete a cell,
then if there was reference to that cell it is all gone. Is Stata the
same in that matter?

I apologize if you so the first question already in another message. I
think that for future reference this problem should be in separate
message.

Kind Regards

John

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