Your code assumes that each patient will only have one panel (so you have your user enter a patient ID and a panel number together). My code assumes that a single patient will frequently go through multiple panels (so I have my user enter a patient ID and then enter panel numbers in a loop for that patient; and when all panels have been processed for that patient, loop through other patients).

To get rid of the recursion in your code, remove the additional function and change every call to additional into a return statement. You will then either need to insert a loop into your menu function or at the end of your script, change:

Code:

menu

to:

Code:

while [ 1 ]
do  menu
done

And then, finally, remove the call to menu in menu and change calls to menu in match to return statements.