Attitude of the parents seeking service from the paediatricians.

The overuse of antibiotics and other medicines have been standing a dangerous proposition and researchers are coming in fore front analyzing and assessing the aftermath of years of misperceptions and inappropriate usage of drugs prescribed by the pediatricians. Two hundred and two parents from the community as well as from the outpatient department of medical college hospitals were interviewed, to study their attitude while seeking for the health service for their children. Data were collected through a face-to-face interview using a structured questionnaire. One hundred and ninety nine (82.7%) of the parents interviewed were mothers and only 3 (1.5%) were fathers. One hundred and sixty-seven (82.7%) parents were from the urban population and the rest 35 (17.3%) were from rural areas. The mothers mean stay in the educational institution was 11.8 years and that of the father's was 13.1 years. About 34.7% parents had to seek for doctor's advice at least once or twice a month and around 43% had to visit doctor's clinic. Most (66.8%) of the parents were from the family earning tk.6000 to tk.20000 a month, 19.8% and 13.4 % were from the families earning below tk.6000 and above tk.20000 respectively. A vast majority of the parents expressed their preference for advice to medicines. Among the medicines they like antibiotics more than vitamins. Majority of the parents showed their interest to spend more time and to have less medicine. For anorexic children parents preferred advice to medicines. An overwhelming majority (98%) of the parents was interested to get advice and ORS for diarrhea. For ARI also a larger number (56.1%) of parents opted for advice only and no medicine at all but 37.1% kept their option for both. A large majority of the parents were preferring more frequent visit and having fewer medicines than the conditions of more medicines with less frequented visits.

Sucralfate in duodenal ulcer disease: a double-blind trial

Seventy-five patients with endoscopically confirmed duodenal ulcer disease received either sucralfate [34 patients] or placebo [41 patients] for 6 weeks in a double-blind clinical trial. Nineteen males and 15 females received sucralfate, and 29 males and 12 females received placebo. At 6 weeks significantly more complete ulcer healing had occurred in patients receiving sucralfate [82.4%] compared with those receiving placebo [24.4%]. The sucralfate group had a significant reduction in their symptoms after 1 week of the drug intake, compared to the placebo group in which the reduction did not reach significance. Constipations, nausea, dry mouth, and skin reach occurred more in patients taking sucralfate compared to the placebo group; in one patient constipation was severe enough to stop the medicine and drop out of the trial. Systemic aluminum toxicity, hypophosphatemia, and diarrhea were not reported in any patient in the sucralfate group