gtsummary - summary table in wide format for multiple variables

Question

Is there a way to produce a summary table for dataframe with multiple continuous variables (wide format) within gtsummary package? So I want to get a table with summary statistics in raws (like in multi-line display), for each variable in the same wide format as in the dataframe.

I've tried to use tbl_summary function, but all variables in output are arranged in long format.

The final table I want to get looks like in the picture. Sample three variables with summary statistics

Answer 1

here's an example how you could make this work

library(gtsummary)
packageVersion("gtsummary")
#> [1] '1.7.2'

# number of decimal places to round statistics
decimals <- list(age = c(1, 2, 1), marker = c(3, 4, 3))

# vector of column names to summarize
c("age", "marker") |> 
  lapply(
    \(x) {
      trial |> 
        # rename and select variable
        select(var = all_of(x)) |> 
        tbl_summary(
          type = ~"continuous2",
          statistic = ~c("{mean} ({sd})", "{median}"),
          digits = ~decimals[[x]],
          label = ~"generic_label",
          missing = "no"
        ) |> 
        # update header to indcate the variable
        modify_header(stat_0 = glue::glue("**{x}**")) |> 
        # remove the header row
        remove_row_type(type = "header") |> 
        # remove the default indentation
        modify_table_styling(columns = label, text_format = "indent", undo_text_format = TRUE)
    }
  ) |> 
  tbl_merge(tab_spanner = FALSE) |> 
  as_kable() # convert to kable to display on stackoverflow

Characteristic	age	marker
Mean (SD)	47.2 (14.31)	0.916 (0.8593)
Median	47.0	0.639

^{Created on 2023-12-27 with reprex v2.0.2}