This report describes how good medication guidance may be provided to patients with blood cancer and discusses the role of the pharmacist in raising the satisfaction of patients and family members with treatment. Chemotherapy for blood cancer causes a variety of severe adverse reactions, giving patients and their families a feeling of anxiety towards it. It is therefore necessary for pharmacists to provide medication guidance in order to reduce anxiety towards drugs during longterm chemotherapy.In the present study, we examined questions regarding chemotherapy from patients and their families for 32 cases in the past 3 years. The 485 questions asked were classified according to subject as follows : 1) Adverse reactions-40%, 2) Chemotherapy protocol-12%, 3) Blood transfusions-7 % , 4) Effects of chemotherapy-6%, 5) Granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF)-6%, 6) Method of use-4%, 7) Drugs preventing opportunistic infections-4%, 8) Administration method-3 %, 9) Chemotherapy in outpatient ward-3 % , 10) High-dose chemotherapy-3 % , 11) Discharge and short stay at home-1%, 12) Drop-out-1 % , 13) Drawing blood-1 % , 14) Color of chemotherapy agents for injection-1 % , and 15) Differences between treatment strategies at other hospitals-1%.

We studied the color change of phenothiazines and metalcontaining drugs after compound formation, followed by use of FTRaman spectrocopy to observe any structural changes in them. When 6 phenothiazines (thioridazine hydrochloride, prochlorperazine maleate, levomepromazine maleate, chlorpromazine phenolphthalinate, uphenazine maleate and perphenazine fendiate) formed compounds with natural aluminum silicate, the color change was accompa nied by a shift of FTRaman signals. These changes could be attributed to the structural changes of phenothiazines. This present observation can be then used in advance to avoid coloration of phenothiazines during preparative procedures with metalcontaining drugs such as antacids.

We examined the clinical efficacy of shitei-decoction in 108 patients with hiccups with respect to various factors influencing them : sex, age, other drugs for hiccups, use of benzodiazepines, malignant tumors, use of antitumor agents, metastasis, complications and stress. Hiccups completely disappeared in 63 of the 108 patients following the administration of shitei-decoction, a rate of 58.3%. However, if we judge efficacy by the sum of patients whose hiccups disappeared and those who experienced remission, the efficacy rate for shitei-decoction was 82.4%. The chi-square test showed that there was no significant correlation between the above hiccup influencing factors and the efficacy of shitei-decoction. Despite previous reports to the contrary, there was no correlation between the efficacy of shitei-decoction and co-administration of benzodiazepines. However, the efficacy of shitei-decoction tended to be higher in patients with brain metastasis, suggesting that efficacy may be greater for central hiccups than peripheral hiccups.