[Patient's participation during the pre-anesthesia visit --"if you have no more questions ..."].

Preanesthesia visits are highly complex communicative events with legally demanded participation of the patients. The contribution describes the logical communicative course of this communication type as well as the communicative tasks of the participants. It is shown that physicians in fact offer opportunities for patients' questions but combine them with initiatives for the completion of the interaction; formulations of such offerings are also discouraging patients' questions. Initiative questions of patients during the conversation otherwise indicate where patients are in need for questions. © Georg Thieme Verlag Stuttgart · New York.