Community based trial of home blood pressure monitoring with nurse-led telephone support in patients with stroke or transient ischaemic attack recently discharged from hospital.

BACKGROUND: High blood pressure in patients with stroke increases the risk of recurrence but management in the community is often inadequate. Home blood pressure monitoring may increase patients' involvement in their care, increase compliance, and reduce the need for patients to attend their General Practitioner if blood pressure is adequately controlled. However the value of home monitoring to improve blood pressure control is unclear. In particular its use has not been evaluated in stroke patients in whom neurological and cognitive ability may present unique challenges. DESIGN: Community based randomised trial with follow up after 12 months. PARTICIPANTS: 360 patients admitted to three South London Stroke units with stroke or transient ischaemic attack within the past 9 months will be recruited from the wards or outpatients and randomly allocated into two groups. All patients will be visited by the specialist nurse at home at baseline when she will measure their blood pressure and administer a questionnaire. These procedures will be repeated at 12 months follow up by another researcher blind as to whether the patient is in intervention or control group. INTERVENTION: INTERVENTION patients will be given a validated home blood pressure monitor and support from the specialist nurse. Control patients will continue with usual care (blood pressure monitoring by their practice). Main outcome measures in both groups after 12 months: 1. Change in systolic blood pressure.2. Cost effectiveness: Incremental cost of the intervention to the National Health Service and incremental cost per quality adjusted life year gained

A Review of Affective Design towards Video Games

AbstractOver the past decade, gaming has become a mainstream form of entertainment. It is one of the fastest growing forms of entertainment and has become a big business, easily rivaling the film industry in terms of consumer spending. However, due to the rapid growth of technology and competitiveness in the industry, game designers are increasingly faced with the challenge of making their games attractive and engaging to its intended users. Over the years, practitioners and researchers in the human-computer interaction (HCI) community have placed a lot of effort in developing processes and methods for use in interdisciplinary fields. An effective user-centered gaming interface plays an important role in the gaming industry and provides valuable contribution in the HCI practice. This is because it supports the mental communication and emotional response of its audiences that is the gamers, thus improving the interaction modes between the user and product. Hence, designing games in a manner that provides the same user experience to all players, irrespective of player motivation, experience or skill is becoming the focus of modern game research. This paper will attempt to address and review the literature on affective design elements, principles and methodologies that are suitable for the video games industry

Paediatric Epilepsy Surgery Programme in Hong Kong: experience in Queen Mary Hospital/Duchess of Kent Children's Hospital

Poster: no. P6BACKGROUND: Surgery is a well-established treatment for adults with intractable seizures. Increasingly, infants and children are being considered for epilepsy surgery. In a growing child, epilepsy surgery has the additional benefit of aborting cognitive decline and improving development and behaviour. METHODS: The paediatric epilepsy surgery programme ...published_or_final_versio

Cervical nodal volume for prognostication and risk stratification of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma, and implications on the TNM-staging system

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