Cardiac Investigations

Our super friendly team of cardiographers, associate practitioners and cardiac physiologists provide the following services at both Peterborough and Hinchingbrooke sites.

• Full disclosure 24-hour ECG monitoring (aka. 24-hour tapes) for inpatients   
• 24-72 hour and 7-14-day full disclosure tapes for outpatients   
• 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring  
• Exercise tolerance tests (aka. An ‘ETT’ or ‘treadmill test’)   
• AliveCor Kardia ECG devices for up to six weeks Our super friendly team of cardiographers, associate practitioners and cardiac physiologists provide the following services at Peterborough and Hinchingbrooke:

Our team of British Society of Echocardiography accredited Cardiac Physiologists and Cardiac Clinical Scientists provide the following services to our patients across both hospital sites and standard echocardiography services in the community. Our services include:

• Standard trans-thoracic echocardiography to current British Society of Echocardiography standards  
• Community echocardiography clinics at several sites including Stamford Hospital, Doddington Community Hospital and The Johnson Community Hospital (Spalding).   
• Contrast echo and bubble saline contrast echo studies - Physiologist led  
• Dobutamine stress echocardiography – both consultant and clinical scientist led  
• Exercise stress echo (treadmill/bike) – both consultant and clinical scientist led  
• Physiologist-led follow-up echocardiography clinics for those with heart valve disease (Valve assessment clinics)  
• Consultant and clinical scientist led trans-oesophageal echocardiography  
• We also work alongside Dr Bolger and the Grown-Up Congenital Heart team at Glenfield Hospital, providing echocardiography services for the Peterborough outreach clinics every eight weeks

Our dedicated team of specialist pacemaker cardiac physiologists currently provide the following services:  

• Pacemaker implantation (alongside our angiography team colleagues)  
• Pacemaker follow up services  
• Community pacemaker follow up clinics at several sites including Stamford Hospital, Doddington Community Hospital, The Johnson Community Hospital (Spalding), North Cambridgeshire Hospital Wisbech and Rutland Memorial Hospital Oakham  
• Loop recorder implant (alongside our angiography colleagues)  
• Loop recorder download and interpretation  
• In the future we also hope to offer Cardiac resynchronisation therapy pacemaker (CRT-P) implants and follow ups.

Our angiography suite comprises of a newly refurbished specialist lab where several more invasive cardiology procedures are undertaken as well as a six-bed day case recovery ward.

Services we offer:  

• Diagnostic angiography (left and right heart catheterisation)  
• Pacemaker implantation  
• Loop recorder implantation  
• Cardioversion  
• Pericardiocentesis  
• Our team organise all of the pre-assessment appointments for the above procedures.  
• We also support our Cardiac Investigations colleagues with Transoesophageal echo, Stress echo and contrast/bubble echo studies.  
• We support our cardiology consultants/registrars during their cardiology outpatient clinics.  

Our nurses support both the cardiac CT service at Peterborough Hospital and the myocardial perfusion (MIBI) service with our Diagnostic imaging and Cardiac Investigations colleagues. For More information, please see our dedicated Angiography Suite webpage.