We provide a range of cardiac screening services to establish if a person is at risk of developing a cardiovascular disease. Our screening services include Cardiovascular Risk Assessment (for people with lifestyle issues such as smoking, excess body weight, poor diet), Pre-fitness Training Cardiac Risk Assessment (for physically active people) and Secondary Hypertension Screening (for people with high blood pressure).
Provocative testing (stress testing/treadmill testing) can be useful in assessing people’s cardiac status prior to undertaking a training programme. This can be helpful in identifying any cardiac conditions that might prevent safe exercise, and in providing people with reassurance for the training that lies ahead.
Pre-exercise screening is used to identify people who may have medical conditions which put them at a higher risk of an adverse event during physical activity. This involves taking a history from the patient about their lifestyle, symptoms and risk factors, as above, but includes provocative exercise testing, to determine their heart’s response to exercise, and an echocardiogram to exclude structural heart disease. Please allow a minimum of one hour for this assessment.
A doctor or nurse will ask if you have any current lifestyle risk factors that increase your risk of developing a cardiovascular disease. These include smoking, body weight, diet, degree of physical activity and alcohol consumption. Your blood fats and sugar will be checked, and your blood pressure will be measured. A score is calculated based on several of these risk factors, your age and gender. An adjustment to the score is made for certain other risk factors such as strong family history and ethnic origin.
There are many different calculators. The Framingham calculator has been used for a long time but many health professionals are moving over to QRISK®2. This is more accurate and takes into account many other factors such as whether you have a condition called atrial fibrillation or kidney disease.
Hypertension (high blood pressure), remains a very common, but very treatable risk factor for heart, kidney and stroke disease. Most of the time, it is primary, i.e. it has no obvious underlying cause. If it occurs in younger people, or is severe or difficult to control, then it is more likely to be secondary, i.e. have an underlying cause, usually kidney disease or a problem with the hormones that control salt and water content in the body. These can be identified and treated.
To diagnose secondary hypertension, you will have a history and examination performed, and we will arrange a 24 hour blood pressure monitor, to assess for true blood pressure elevation (as opposed to ‘white coat hypertension’), and an echocardiogram, to assess whether blood pressure has damaged your heart.
We will also check other markers to pinpoint the cause of your high blood pressure. These could include:
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