• Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Monkseaton Medical Centre

Cauldwell Avenue, Monkseaton, Whitley Bay, Tyne and Wear NE25 9PH. Tel: 0191 252 1616

  • Home
  • About Us
    • Services
    • The Team
      • Clinical Team
      • Management
      • Administration Team
    • Opening Hours
    • Training Practice
    • Named Accountable GP
  • Appointments
    • Face-to-Face Appointments
    • Home Visits
    • Telephone Consultations
    • Group Consultations
    • eConsults
    • Navigator
    • Shared Decision Making
  • Prescriptions
  • Patient Information
    • Private Work
    • Sickness Certificates
    • Complaints Procedure
    • Friends and Family Survey
    • Feedback
    • Patient Survey
    • Patient Participation Group
    • Cancer Screening Programmes
    • Out of Hours
    • Zero Tolerance
    • Carers Policy
    • Privacy Statement for Patients 2022
    • Patient Data Sharing Programme
    • GDPR Privacy Policy
  • Self Care
    • Alcohol Support
    • Bereavements
    • Diabetes
    • Exercise
    • Healthy Weight
    • Living Well North Tyneside
    • Mental Wellbeing and Domestic Abuse
    • Minor Illnesses
    • Opioids and Painkillers
    • Sexual Health
    • Sleep & Tiredness
    • Smoking Support
    • Stress & Anxiety
  • News
  • Online Services
  • Coronavirus
    • Supporting your recovery after COVID-19

Group Consultations

The practice currently runs regular group consultations regarding Cardiovascular Risk. Patients deemed to be of high risk will be invited to a group consultation by letter.

What is Cardiovascular Risk (QRisk)?

The QRisk tool is used to calculate your cardiovascular risk over the next 10 years.

The QRisk calculator takes into account many factors including age, sex, weight, cholesterol, blood pressure, smoking status and pre-existing conditions to calculate a percentage QRisk.

This percentage is your theoretical risk of having a cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack or stroke, over the next 10 years.

So if your QRisk was 20% that means you have a 1 in 5 chance of having a stroke or heart attack over the next 10 years or, to put it another way, out of 100 people 20 would have a stroke or heart attack over the next 10 years (and 80 patients would not).

Recent national NICE guidelines have suggested that anyone with a QRisk of greater than 10% should be offered lifestyle advice to lower their risk and that they should consider treatment with a drug called a statin.

Lifestyle Advice

By making changes to your lifestyle you can reduce your cardiovascular risk. This might involve changes to:

  • Diet – eating more fresh fruit and vegetables, oily fish and eating less saturated and trans fats
  • Exercise – taking more regular exercise
  • Weight – lose weight to maintain a healthy weight and body mass index
  • Alcohol – reducing the amount of alcohol that you drink to within safe daily and weekly limits
  • Smoking – stop smoking
  • We are able to advice on lifestyle changes and also further information is available from NHS choices

Statins

Drug treatment with statins (atorvastatin or simvastatin) can reduce the cardiovascular risk and this is backed up by evidence from clinical trials.

We can discuss with you in more detail the benefits and risks of taking statins.

The dose is usually one tablet daily taken at night for the rest of your life.

The most well established side effects of statins are their effects on muscles and on liver enzymes.

Some patients do complain of muscle aches and pains and muscle weakness. If you were to experience muscle problems then we would stop the drug and discuss alternative options with you.

We would also monitor your liver function before treatment and regularly while you are taking statins.

Less well-known and rare side effects of statins include stomach upset, nausea and constipation or diarrhoea, headache, dizziness, depression, sleep disturbances, memory loss and sexual dysfunction. Some patients do experience these side effects when they first start taking a statin but these usually settle within a week or two and many people can take them without any side effects at all.

If you are experiencing any side effects which could be related to the statin please contact the surgery.

Primary Sidebar

Online Consultations

Only some medical problems are suitable for an eConsult. If you are thinking of contacting your GP surgery this way please check here to see if your GP will be able to deal with your concerns in an eConsult.

Online Consultation

Would you prefer to read this website in another language? Google Translate offers a free automated translation. Simply go to https://translate.google.com/, type in our web address into the left hand box, choose your language in the right hand box and click translate.

Opening Times

Monday: 8am to 6pm
Tuesday: 8am to 6pm
Wednesday: 8am to 6pm
Thursday: 8am to 6pm
Friday: 8am to 6pm
Saturday: Closed
Sunday: Closed
For surgery closure days click here

Updates

  • Some of our normal operations have changed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Click here for more details.
  • We are offering online services. This allows you to book appointments, order repeat prescriptions and view your medical record online. Click here for more details.
  • Access Online Services

    Copyright © 2023 — Monkseaton Medical Centre • All rights reserved.

    Manage Cookie Consent
    We use cookies to optimise our website and our service.
    Functional Always active
    The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
    Preferences
    The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
    Statistics
    The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
    Marketing
    The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
    Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
    View preferences
    {title} {title} {title}