The Usefulness of a Wearable Electronic Vision Enhancement System for People With Age-Related Macular Degeneration: A Randomized Crossover Trial.

Purpose: To determine the usefulness of a wearable electronic vision enhancement system (wEVES) for people with age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Methods: Thirty-four adults with AMD, 64.7% female, mean age 80.

'Such a lot of bother': Qualitative results of a home trial of a wearable electronic vision enhancement system for people with age-related macular degeneration.

Purpose: Wearable electronic low vision enhancement systems (wEVES) improve visual function but are not widely adopted by people with vision impairment. Here, qualitative research methods were used to investigate the usefulness of wEVES for people with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) after an extended home trial.

Methods: Following a 12-week non-masked randomised crossover trial, semi-structured interviews were completed with 34 participants with AMD, 64.

"I'm like something out of star wars": a qualitative investigation of the views of people with age-related macular degeneration regarding wearable electronic vision enhancement systems.

Purpose: This study explores the initial views of people with age-related macular degeneration towards wearable electronic vision enhancement systems.

Methods: Ten adults with age-related macular degeneration participated in semi-structured interviews, which were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Results: Four themes were identified.

Does medical humanities matter? The challenge of COVID-19.

Medical humanities has tended first and foremost to be associated with the ways in which the arts and humanities help us to understand health. However, this is not the only or necessarily the primary aim of our field. What the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed above all is what the field of medical humanities has insisted on: the deep entanglement of social, cultural, historical life with the biomedical.

Are wearable electronic vision enhancement systems (wEVES) beneficial for people with age-related macular degeneration? A scoping review.

Introduction: Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common cause of irreversible visual impairment in the United Kingdom. It has a wide-ranging detrimental impact on daily living, including impairment of functional ability and quality of life. Assistive technology designed to overcome this impairment includes wearable electronic vision enhancement systems (wEVES).

Is patient identification of 'comfortable' print size a useful clinical parameter for low vision reading assessment?

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine what a person with vision loss considers a 'comfortable' print size to read, and examine whether this reflects any of three currently used parameters for identifying print size required for sustained reading tasks: minimum size to achieve maximum reading speed (the critical print size (CPS)); minimum size for functional reading at 80 wpm and/or a size that is double the reading acuity (representing an acuity reserve of 2:1).

Methods: Forty-seven participants entering low vision rehabilitation (mean age 77 years, 24 with macular degeneration) were assessed using MNREAD charts to determine reading acuity, maximum reading speed, CPS and the minimum size allowing functional (80 wpm) reading. Comfortable print size was assessed by asking participants to identify 'the smallest print size that you would find comfortable using' on the MNREAD chart.

Change in rehabilitation needs and activity limitations over time of adults with acquired visual impairment following entry to a low vision rehabilitation service in England.

Purpose: Longitudinal changes in priority rehabilitation needs, vision-related activity limitation and importance of visual goals were evaluated in a sample of people with a visual impairment over a year following entry to low vision rehabilitation services in England.

Methods: Participants were adults with newly registered visual impairment within Leicestershire. Priority scores, indicating the level of rehabilitative need, were determined from the importance and difficulty scores of the 48 goals of the Participation and Activity Inventory (PAI).

Menopausal symptoms and work: a narrative review of women's experiences in casual, informal, or precarious jobs.

Governments, employers, and trade unions are increasingly developing "menopause at work" policies for female staff. Many of the world's most marginalised women work, however, in more informal or insecure jobs, beyond the scope of such employment protections. This narrative review focuses upon the health impact of such casual work upon menopausal women, and specifically upon the menopausal symptoms they experience.

'The body says it': the difficulty of measuring and communicating sensations of breathlessness.

Breathlessness is a sensation affecting those living with chronic respiratory disease, obesity, heart disease and anxiety disorders. The Multidimensional Dyspnoea Profile is a respiratory questionnaire which attempts to measure the incommunicable different sensory qualities (and emotional responses) of breathlessness. Drawing on sensorial anthropology we take as our object of study the process of turning sensations into symptoms.

'To more than I can be': A phenomenological meta-ethnography of singing groups for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Anecdotal experience and qualitative accounts suggest that singing groups, classes or choirs specifically for people with COPD (henceforth referred to as COPD-SGs) are effective in improving health. However, this is not reflected in the quantitative evidence. This meta-ethnography deployed phenomenological methods to explore this discrepancy.

Dance for people with chronic breathlessness: a transdisciplinary approach to intervention development.

Objectives: A transdisciplinary research approach was used to develop a holistic understanding of the physical and psychosocial benefits of dance as an intervention for people living with chronic breathlessness.

Methods: The dance programme was developed in collaboration with British Lung Foundation Breathe Easy members in NE England (Darlington) and London (Haringey). Members of the Darlington group were invited to participate in the programme.

Making Breath Visible: Reflections on Relations between Bodies, Breath and World in the Critical Medical Humanities.

Breath is invisible and yet ever present and vital for living beings. The concept of invisibility in relation to breath operates in concrete and metaphorical ways to extend ideas about breath and breathlessness across disciplines, in clinical spaces and in life experience. Using a critical medical humanities approach, I demonstrate that the poverty of narrative accounts and language for breath outside the health context have had a crucial influence enabling clinically mediated interpretations and accounts to dominate.

Disrupted breath, songlines of breathlessness: an interdisciplinary response.

Health research is often bounded by disciplinary expertise. While cross-disciplinary collaborations are often forged, the analysis of data which draws on more than one discipline at the same time is underexplored. Life of Breath, a 5-year project funded by the Wellcome Trust to understand the clinical, historical and cultural phenomenology of the breath and breathlessness, brings together an interdisciplinary team, including medical humanities scholars, respiratory clinicians, medical anthropologists, medical historians, cultural theorists, artists and philosophers.

The meaning of the name of 'pulmonary rehabilitation' and its influence on engagement with individuals with chronic lung disease.

Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is recommended for all individuals living with a lung condition and chronic breathlessness. This article considers how adopting an interdisciplinary, medical humanities approach to the term 'pulmonary rehabilitation' might unpack some of the misconceptions, misrepresentations or negative connotations surrounding it, which have been largely overlooked in explanations of the low uptake of this programme. Taking key insights from Wellcome Trust-funded Life of Breath project, including ethnographic research in community fitness groups in North East England and the 'Breath Lab' special interest group, this article outlines how the whole-body approach of PR is not easily understood by those with lung conditions; how experience can inform breath perception through the pacing of everyday life; and how stigma can impact rehabilitation.

Rehabilitation needs and activity limitations of adults with a visual impairment entering a low vision rehabilitation service in England.

Purpose: To evaluate outcome measures of the Participation and Activity Inventory (PAI) in a sample of adults with acquired visual impairment entering vision rehabilitation. Both Priority Scores, indicating level of rehabilitative need, and Person Measures, indicating goal difficulty, were considered.

Methods: Participants were newly registered adults with visual impairment within Leicestershire, United Kingdom.

Chronic breathlessness: re-thinking the symptom.

http://ow.ly/ZKNj30hzUUM

What's 'difficult'? A multi-stage qualitative analysis of secondary care specialists' experiences with medically unexplained symptoms.

Background: The term 'difficult' is pervasively used in relation to medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) and patients with MUS. This article scrutinises the use of the term by analysing interview data from a study of secondary care specialists' experiences with and attitudes towards patients suffering from MUS.

Design: Qualitative design employing semi-structured open-ended interviews systematically analysed in three stages: first, data were analysed according to the principles of content analysis.

Inspiring change: humanities and social science insights into the experience and management of breathlessness.

Purpose Of Review: Breathlessness can be debilitating for those with chronic conditions, requiring continual management. Yet, the meaning of breathlessness for those who live with it is poorly understood in respect of its subjective, cultural, and experiential significance. This article discusses a number of current issues in understanding the experience of breathlessness.

The payment for performance model and its influence on British general practitioners' principles and practice.

This article explores some effects of the British payment for performance model on general practitioners' principles and practice, which may contribute to issues related to financial incentive modalities and quality of primary healthcare services in low and middle-income countries. Aiming to investigate what general practitioners have to say about the effect of the British payment for performance on their professional ethos we carried out semi-structured interviews with 13 general practitioner educators and leaders working in academic medicine across the UK. The results show a shift towards a more biomedical practice model and fragmented care with nurse practitioners and other health care staff focused more on specific disease conditions.