Private Cardiac Tests for Enfield — ECGs, Heart Monitors and Echocardiograms

Why choose us for private cardiac tests near Enfield?

Every heart test the clinic offers appears here with its price and the length of the appointment, so the cost is settled in your head before you pick up the telephone. Monitors are fitted at the clinic and worn at home, which turns a week of worry into one short visit and a return trip. Patients come to us from Enfield Town, Bush Hill Park, Grange Park and Edmonton, and the clinic is open at the weekend as well as through the working week.

If chest pain is severe or crushing, spreads to your arm or jaw, or comes with breathlessness or sweating, call 999. For everything else, these are the heart tests you can book here:

Not sure which of them fits what you have been feeling? Get in touch and the team will go through it with you, or see a private GP first if you would rather someone took a history and listened to your chest before anything is booked. We cannot tell you what is wrong over the telephone, and we will say so honestly if a test is not the right next step. The cardiac tests page carries the same list if you would rather browse it there first. If you are a GP or consultant sending a patient, refer a patient sets out what we need.

Which heart test do you need?

This is the question worth getting right, because these tests answer different questions and the dearest one is not automatically the most useful. What decides it is usually how often your symptom happens. Something you notice most days can be caught by a short recording; something that turns up twice a month will slip past one entirely, and a longer monitor is the honest answer.

Here is what each test is for:

• Resting ECG. A trace of your heart's electrical activity at the moment it is taken. Sensible as a first test and good for rate, rhythm on the day and the way the signal travels, but it only sees the minutes it is running. It cannot rule out narrowed heart arteries — a resting ECG is often completely normal in someone with angina, so chest tightness brought on by exertion needs a doctor's assessment rather than this test on its own. The clinic does not carry out exercise or stress testing.
• 24-hour ECG, or Holter monitor. A small recorder worn for a full day and night, which suits symptoms that show up most days rather than occasionally.
• Longer ECG monitoring — 2, 3, 5, 7 or 14 days. For palpitations that come and go. The longer the recording runs, the better the chance it is running when an episode happens, and the fee for each length is in the list above.
• Echocardiogram. An ultrasound of the heart itself: the chambers, the muscle and the valves, and how well they move. It looks at structure, where an ECG looks at electrics.
• 24-hour blood pressure monitor. A cuff that takes readings through the day and while you sleep, which answers whether the pressure is genuinely high or only high in a clinic room.

If you are still unsure, describe what you actually feel and when it happens rather than naming a test — that is what the team need to steer you well. Where a telephone call cannot settle it, a private GP appointment first is often the sounder route, because it may spare you a test that was never going to show what you needed to know.

What happens at the appointment

None of these tests hurts and none of them uses ionising radiation. An ECG only listens: the electrodes on your skin pick up the electrical signal your heart already produces, and nothing at all is passed into you. An echocardiogram uses high-frequency sound waves through gel on the chest wall, the same physics as any other ultrasound scan, so there is no dose to think about and no after-effects.

What the appointment looks like:

1. You undress to the waist in private and lie down, with a gown or a blanket there if you would like one.
2. Small sticky electrodes are placed on the chest, and sometimes on the arms and legs. A little chest hair may need trimming so they stay put, and you are asked first.
3. For a resting ECG you lie still and breathe normally while the trace is recorded, and the recording itself is over in a couple of minutes.
4. For an echocardiogram you lie on your left side while a probe is moved across the chest with gel, and you may be asked to hold your breath for a moment.
5. For a monitor, the device is fitted, tested and shown to you before you leave, and you are told how and when to bring it back.

If you go home wearing a monitor, keep a simple note of the time whenever you feel a symptom. That diary is what lets the person reading the recording line up what you felt with what your heart was doing at that moment, and it often matters more than the length of the recording. Wear something two-piece that is easy to undress to the waist, and leave body lotion and oil off your chest that morning, because electrodes will not stick to it. Booking for a child? Tell us their age when you ring. A patient under 16 must be brought by a parent or someone with parental responsibility, who consents to the test with them, and some examinations are not suitable for children — the team will say plainly if yours is not one we can do.

How long does it take, and when do the results arrive?

A resting ECG is a 15-minute appointment and an echocardiogram is booked for 45 minutes, both from walking in to walking out. Having a monitor fitted is a shorter visit, and the recording then runs for as long as you have booked, from 24 hours up to 14 days, while you work, sleep, climb the stairs and walk the dog as usual. Catching an ordinary week is the entire point of it.

Your written report is normally e-mailed to you as a PDF within one working day of your appointment. You receive a copy and, with your consent, we can send it to your GP or consultant — for a weekend appointment that copy can take up to 48 hours. With a monitor there is nothing to read until the device is back with us, so the report follows its return rather than the day it was fitted. How your results reach you covers the rest.

Getting here from Enfield, and the second trip a monitor needs

Appointments are at the London Diagnostic Centre, at the rear of Grovelands Medical Centre, 1 Grovelands Rd, London N13 4RJ. That address is in Palmers Green, at the southern end of the borough, and not in Enfield Town, which lies a few miles further north. Green Lanes is the last stretch whichever way you drive in: down through Bush Hill Park and Winchmore Hill to the Palmers Green Triangle, then a few hundred metres west along Aldermans Hill.

A monitor means two short journeys rather than one — the fitting, and then bringing the device back — so choose the route you would be content to make twice before you book. By rail the Hertford Loop leaves Enfield Chase and calls at Grange Park and Winchmore Hill on its way into Palmers Green, which is the closest station to us and a short walk from the door. The map here marks Enfield, not the clinic itself.

• Enfield Town and Bush Hill Park, EN1, down through Winchmore Hill
• Grange Park and Winchmore Hill, N21, on the Hertford Loop into Palmers Green
• Southgate, N14, Edmonton, N9 and N18, and Palmers Green, N13, around the clinic itself

When the team ring to confirm, ask where to park and which entrance to use, because the clinic is behind the medical centre rather than on the road front. If you use a wheelchair, have trouble with steps, or need an interpreter or someone with you, say so when the team ring back and they will tell you exactly what the building can and cannot do and arrange what is needed. It is also worth asking what you can and cannot do while a monitor is on, so that the recording is a fair picture of your week. What to expect on the day sets out the rest, and the price list carries every published fee.