How about getting more from nothing? Now you can easily create a flag variable PEAK that flags the a record that, for example, contains the maximum pulse for each patient. Notice how the intermediate group descriptive variable MPULSE is useful to create the PEAK variable but is not required to be saved in the final dataset. Using Proc SQL this way makes it so easy and yet so powerful! Let me know what you think of this Proc SQL example.

proc sql;
create table vitals2 as
select a.*,
case
when b.mpulse = pulse then 'Y'
else ''
end as peak length=1 format=$1.
from vital as a
left join
(select usubjid, max(pulse) as mpulse
from vital where pulse > . group by usubjid) as b on a.usubjid=b.usubjid;
quit;