[Opinions and attitudes of patients visiting pharmacies]. / Názory a postoje pacientu pri návsteve lékáren.

The paper is devoted to the problems concerning the opinions and attitudes of customers of pharmacies, i.e. their opinions on and attitudes to the question of information needs and satisfaction with information and services provided in pharmacies in the Czech Republic. The article presents the results of a questionnaire survey answering the following questions: why the respondents come to pharmacies and what the reason of the present visit is, whom they prefer as the dispenser of the drug and why, how often they went to a pharmacy in the recent period, from where they get information concerning drugs, whether it is advantageous for them to obtain information in a pharmacy and what information they received during the present visit, who provided the information or advice, how many pieces of information they got and how they are satisfied with them, whether they required information in a pharmacy, or whether they came to a pharmacy for this purpose, why the respondents have purposefully selected a particular pharmacy, whether they take drugs daily and which ones, what their opinion on the amount the supplementary payment is, what OTC drugs they buy, what drugs they prefer, whether they concentrate on a certain preparation, or possibly which one, what is their opinion about the scale of the assortment of OTC drugs, whether they use homeopathic medicines, and what they miss in pharmacies.

Effect of overall treatment time on local control in radical radiotherapy for squamous cell carcinoma of esophagus.

PURPOSE: To analyze the effect of overall treatment time on local control in radical radiotherapy for squamous cell carcinoma of esophagus. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Three hundred and fifty-three patients with inoperable esophageal cancer (tumor length < or = 10 cm in all cases) treated during 1963-1988 by radical radiotherapy alone either as continuous or split-course therapy. The overall treatment time varied from 35 to 55 days and the total dosage from 50 to 71 Gy in the continuous therapy group (n = 138), and in the split-course group (n = 215) with a planned 3-week rest interval in the middle of the treatment from 56 to 70 days and from 55 to 70 Gy, respectively. The logit method of the linear-quadratic formula for local control at 1 year was used to examine the effect of treatment time on local control. All patients were pooled to obtain a wide range of overall treatment times. RESULTS: The 1-, 2-, and 5-year actuarial survival rates according to the T-stage in the continuous therapy group from the first day of the radiotherapy were: 57%, 32%, and 10% for the T1 tumors and 23%, 8%, and 5% for the T2 tumors. The corresponding figures for the split-course group were: 50%, 19%, and 4% for the T1 tumors and 17%, 6%, and 3% for the T2 tumors. The 1-year local control rate was 56% for the T1 tumors and 15% for the T2 tumors in the continuous therapy group and 48% for the T1 tumors and 10% for the T2 tumors in the split-course group. The results of the logit method did not fit well with the T1 tumors. For the T2 tumors, they showed Dprolif to be about 0.24 Gy/day for local control at 1 year. As a consequence, protraction of overall time by 1 week should be compensated by increasing the total dose by 1.8 Gy for 1 year local control. CONCLUSIONS: More attention should be focused on repopulation. Shortening of overall treatment time might be beneficial for the treatment of squamous cell carcinoma of esophagus.