Home blood pressure monitoring.

Home blood pressure monitoring Shah and colleagues found patients with heart failure who lived in areas of socioeconomic deprivation were less likely than those in more affluent areas to be treated with recommended beta blockers. 1 We recently investigated use of home blood pressure (BP) monitoring in stroke patients registered at a deprived inner city general practice in Lambeth. In March 2008 we sent confidential postal questionnaires, backed up by a telephone call if required, to 74 patients listed on the stroke register at an inner London general practice. We excluded 57 patients in nursing homes and four patients with severe illness because of the difficulty of completing and posting questionnaires. The questions included asking patients whether they measured their BP at home and whether they were aware of their target BP. The protocol, patient information leaflet, and questionnaire were reviewed by Wandsworth Research Ethics Committee. Data were entered and analysed using SPSS (version 13). The response rate was 61% (45/74) of which 35 were postal and 10 were telephone questionnaires. The mean age of the responders was 71 years (range 31–94 years) and 58% (26) were male. The majority of those answering the questionnaire (69%, 31/45) described their ethnicity as white. However, 20% (9/45) described their ethnic group as black-Caribbean, a group known to have a high risk of stroke. A further four responders described their ethnicity as Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, and 'Other' respectively.