Mysql语句，有没有办法改进这个？

I have two tables accounts and friend_requests, here is my code...

$q = $dbc -> prepare("SELECT * FROM friend_requests WHERE id_to = ?");
$q -> execute(array($details['id']));
$account = $q -> fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
$result = $q -> rowCount();
if ($result < 1) {
    echo '<p>You haven\'t asked or been asked to be friends with anyone yet.</p><p>This is where you can accept or deny friend requests.</p>';
}
else {
    $q = $dbc -> prepare("SELECT * FROM accounts WHERE id = ?");
    $q -> execute(array($account['id']));
    while ($request = $q -> fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
        echo '<p>' . $request['username'] . ' has requested to be friends with you.</p>';
    }
}

You will notice I check to see if anyone has requested to be friends with the user in the first sql statement by using a rowCount() if there is a row match I pull the ID from the first table to display that users information from account, is there a better way to do this with joins whilst using rowcount??

$q = $dbc -> prepare ("SELECT a.* 
FROM accounts a
INNER JOIN friend_requests fr ON (a.id = fr.id)
WHERE fr.id_to = ?");
...
if (!$q -> rowCount())
{
  echo 'No requests';
}
else 
while ($request = $q -> fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) { /// output}