Cardiology Services in Stirling

The cardiology clinic at Kings Park Hospital in Stirling gives you one-stop access to rapid assessment and treatment by a Consultant Cardiologist who is highly skilled and experienced in all cardiac conditions.

At Kings Park Hospital, we carry out a range of treatments. These include resting electrocardiograms (ECG) to record the heart’s electrical activity, cholesterol tests, and blood pressure monitoring. We also perform chest x-rays, cardiac ultrasound, echocardiogram (a scan of the heart), and exercise treadmill (tolerance) tests to diagnose angina patients.

Should you require further investigations, your Consultant Cardiologist will refer you directly to our sister hospital, Ross Hall Hospital in Glasgow. Other tests could include:

• Computerised tomography (CT) scan
• Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan
• Coronary angiogram – an x-ray of coronary blood vessels

Cardiology is a medical speciality concerned with diagnosing, investigating and treating heart disease and vascular disease (problems with blood vessels such as veins and arteries).

A Cardiologist is a heart specialist who deals with patients with complaints including breathlessness, chest pain, palpitations, dizziness and blackouts, high blood pressure, cardiac murmurs, and swollen ankles.

Symptoms can be very daunting, so you’ll have ample time with your consultant to discuss the next steps if further interventions or treatment are needed.

To attend our cardiology clinic, your GP or consultant can refer you. We also accept those who wish to self-refer.

Our hospital has well-equipped modern consulting facilities. We recognise that seeing a caring, experienced and skilled specialist is important, and we want you to feel as relaxed and as comfortable as possible.

You’ll be shown in to see your Consultant Cardiologist in a private consulting room. They will listen closely to you as you explain your medical history and your symptoms before giving you a clinical examination.

We do appropriate diagnostic tests on the day of your appointment.

One of the most common investigations is an ECG. Electrodes are attached to your chest, arms and legs and connected to the ECG machine, which records your heart rhythm.

Once you have had the initial ECG assessment, your Consultant Cardiologist will consider the situation and advise further investigations. We pride ourselves on not having long waiting times, so you can expect to be dealt with quickly and efficiently, with the results coming back promptly.

Many conditions do not need surgery. The most common treatment is for palpitations, which require ambulatory monitoring – wearing an ECG event monitor to analyse your heart for 14 days while you go about your everyday life. The ECG recording will aid diagnosis, with drug therapy rather than anything invasive being the primary treatment. Other non-invasive treatments include lifestyle modifications for high blood pressure.

If you require surgical treatment, our sister hospital, The Ross Hall Hospital in Glasgow, carries out state-of-the-art interventions and operations, including:

• Coronary artery bypass surgery
• Valve replacement surgery
• Coronary angioplasty (the surgeon inserts a balloon to open up narrowed coronary arteries and a stent metal tube to improve blood flow)
• Pacemaker device therapy (performed if the heart slows down and comes to a stop for a few seconds, causing blackouts. The surgeon makes a small incision and implants a device connected to electric leads that take over the heart’s natural pacemaker)

If you need to go to Ross Hall for treatment, your consultant will explain everything to you in detail so you’ll have a firm idea of what to expect, when you’ll get results and what they could be.

Promptly seeing one of our Consultant Cardiologists means we can quickly carry out diagnostic tests to determine what’s causing your symptoms and appropriate treatment.

You’ll see the same consultant from your initial consultation to the end of your treatment, whether at Kings Park Hospital or Ross Hall Hospital, so there is no dilution of care.

Your Consultant Cardiologist has time to listen, investigate, reassure, and advise you on your condition at the consultation. Seeing a Cardiologist within a short timeframe can stop heart and vascular diseases from making your life a misery or potentially taking it.

If your Consultant Cardiologist discovers a problem, most patients respond incredibly well to treatment, and the result is often life changing. Cardiac surgery also has low complication rates – less than half a per cent.

It’s not uncommon for patients to tell us that cardiac treatment has turned their lives around.