Objective: In this retrospective study, patients’ medical records were reviewed to investigate the profiles of 633 OLP cases in a group of Romania. Material and Methods: In this retrospective study, the following clinical data were obtained from the medical charts of patients: gender, age, clinical presentation of OLP, site affected, presence of symptoms, extraoral manifestations of lichen planus, presence of systemic diseases, and history of medications. Results: Most (78.67%) OLP patients were female and the mean age at presentation was 52 years. The white type of the disease (reticular/papular/plaque lesions) was the main form encountered in this sample (48.97%). Among patients with available hepatitis C virus test results, 9.6% were serum-positive. OLP was associated with gallbladder disease (i.e. cholecystitis, cholelithiasis) in 19% of patients. Six patients (0.95%) developed squamous cell carcinoma at a site with confirmed OLP lesions. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, no similar study has been conducted in a Romanian population. The present investigation revealed the predominance of OLP among middle-aged white women and the prevalence of bilateral involvement of the buccal mucosa with reticular white lesions. Anti-HCV circulating antibodies were more common in patients with OLP than in the general population and, notably, OLP was associated with gallbladder disease (cholecystitis, cholelithiasis) in 19% of patients. Key words:Oral lichen planus, oral mucosal diseases, retrospective study.

Nowadays, the competition registered on the Romanian markets regarding the activity of private ophthalmology organizations has raised their interest in developing consumer-oriented strategies. The key factor that assures a differentiation as well as a competitive advantage is the service quality from a marketing perspective. Objectives: From a marketing perspective, service quality is measured as a perceived discrepancy between the consumers’ expectations and was actually performed in health care services. The most widely and validated measurement is the SERVQUAL scale. However, a variety of SERVQUAL scales have been applied in different health care environments without taking into consideration the specialty of the health care service. Thus, the objective of this paper was to measure the service quality in the Romanian ophthalmology private organizations using the SERVQUAL measurement, by identifying the SERVQUAL dimensions, which register the highest and the lowest gap scores. Materials and methods: The instrument for data collection was the SERVQUAL self-administered questionnaire that consisted of 22 items measured on a 5-point Likert scale. The sample size encompassed 100 participants and the sampling technique was the snowball. The internal consistency, validity and the reliability of the SERVQUAL scale was determined by the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients and factor analysis. The SERVQUAL questionnaire focused on 5 dimensions (tangibles, reliability, assurance, empathy and responsiveness) and each dimension, in its turn, was characterized by different items. Results: The mean age of the participants was 49.52 years, with a mean income of 3031 Romanian Currency and the mean period of wearing eyeglasses was 5 years (±2). Further, there were 47% females and 53% males. The overall internal consistency of the SERVQUAL scale, as well as the dimensions’ internal consistency were all above 0.7 and the factor analysis revealed that the items loaded properly on each dimension. Moreover, the gap scores of the SERVQUAL scale’s dimensions pinpointed that the highest gap score was registered by the Tangibles dimension and the lowest gap score was registered by the Reliability dimension. Conclusions: Performing the ophthalmology service right the first time, contributes significantly to the improvement of the marketing effectiveness and the operating efficiency.

Introduction. The importance of experience in marketing grew, as the concept itself is very personal and difficult to measure. Experience turns out to be complicated but once placed in a context it gets significant features. As the health care competitive environment increases, marketers are looking for new and effective methods of engaging consumers by using experiential marketing strategies. Moreover, little is known about the consumers' perceptions related to ophthalmologic services. Aim. The objective of this paper was to measure the consumer's perception of experiential marketing in the Romanian private ophthalmologic services by using structural equation modeling. Materials and Methods. The Experiential Marketing model consisted of the following components: Sense Experience, Feel Experience, Think Experience, Act Experience and Relate Experience as well as the consequences of applying Experiential Marketing in the form of willingness to purchase a service, generating word-of-mouth communication and building consumer loyalty. The sampling method was non-probabilistic, using the snowball technique and the sample was made up of 190 people who wore eyeglasses for more than 3 years. The instrument for data collection was a self-administered questionnaire, which consisted of 2 parts: the first section contained several demographic questions and the second section encompassed closed end questions related to the perception of private ophthalmologic services from an experiential marketing perspective. All the second section questions were measured on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 with Strongly Disagree to 5 to Strongly Agree. The data analysis was conducted in SPSS and the structural equation modeling was performed in WarpPLS version 6.0. Findings. There were 71.05% respondents, who appreciated the application of experiential marketing in private ophthalmologic services, followed by 18.95%, who were confused. The demographic profile of respondents encompassed the following features: females with the ages between 36 and 45, from the rural area and with a middle level of education, their private ophthalmologic consultation frequency was at every 3 months and they also declared having a stable physician.

The wide access to varied, attractive, and aggressively promoted information can induce pregnant women to think that any form of complementary therapy can be a saving solution for a medical problem because these therapies are natural, therefore, harmless. Updated information from literature about indications, benefits, limits, and risks of phytotherapy in pregnancy was presented. Valuable therapeutic resources with proven clinical efficacy (evidence-based medicine) were presented for each trimester of pregnancy, during labor, postpartum, but also during breastfeeding. For some phytotherapeutics, there are scientific studies. There is also a detailed presentation about some possibilities for therapeutic errors, which should be avoided during pregnancy. Positive results of phytotherapy deserve to be known and applied by the obstetrician for the certain benefit of future mothers.

Neural tube defects (NTDs) occur during embryogenesis, specifically during the fifth or sixth week of gestation, and are described as aberrant neural tube closing. The defect may alter the normal development of the vertebrae, spinal cord, cranium, or brain. The present study describes the case of a 41-year-old pregnant woman with fetal sacral meningocele, no associated pathologies, no family history of neural tube defects, a pregnancy under folate supplementation with the aim of highlighting the importance of ultrasound in diagnosing neural tube defects. The ultrasonographic diagnosis was not clear from the beginning. In our case, the differential diagnosis of meningocele was made with the cystic compound of a sacrococcygeal teratoma, which represents one of the most common congenital tumors in newborns. The particularity of this case was that a neural tube defect occurred despite the prophylactic administration of folic acid during pregnancy, which represents a well-documented protection against neural tube defects in fetuses.