Community cardiology and respiratory service

Our community cardiology and respiratory service provides assessments and diagnostic tests for people who may have problems with their heart, blood pressure or breathing.

The service is consultant-led and based at various clinics in our local communities, allowing patients to be seen and treated closer to home instead of in hospital. Each clinic offers a tailored range of services, so you will be referred to the clinic that is most appropriate for your symptoms and closest to your home.

 

Conditions and treatments

We offer an efficient and effective service to treat a range of heart-related symptoms and conditions including: 

• chest pain
• shortness of breath, at rest or on exertion
• arrhythmia (palpitations or slow/fast heart beat) and specifically atrial fibrillation (abnormal heart rhythm) 
• collapsing or fainting episodes
• general problems with the heart
• uncontrolled hypertension (high blood pressure) 
• heart failure (including swelling of ankles, breathlessness at night)

In addition, our community clinics can treat a range of respiratory symptoms and conditions, including:  

• COPD: for optimisation and long-term management and support
• shortness of breath, chronic cough or frequent chest infection with normal chest x-ray
• asthma – for disease management and optimisation
• bronchiectasis – for airways clearance and medical review
• pulmonary rehabilitation – in patients with known respiratory disease with breathlessness on exertion 
• chronic resting hypoxia (SpO2 <92%) that may require or have home oxygen

We offer the following diagnostic tests:

• echocardiogram
• electrocardiogram (ECG)
• 24-hour ECG
• 24-hour blood pressure monitoring
• spirometry (for respiratory patients only)

Additional information

In addition to the services above, we also offer services for heart failure, including heart and shortness of breath clinics and a home visiting service for people with heart failure. We also offer a variety of specialist respiratory clinics.

When we see you in our community clinics, we may find that we require further specialist investigations or procedures that can only be performed in a hospital setting in order to help treat you more effectively. In those cases, the consultant overseeing your care in the community will refer you as appropriate.

Further online resources

• British Heart Foundation

Further online resources

• British Heart Foundation