Family doctor surgeries and health centres across the city are now monitoring heart patients more closely, supported by a specialist advisory team based in the community.

Health professionals attending a meeting of Dundee Local Health Care Co-operative in Kings Cross Hospital today were brought up to date on the progress of the Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) programme.

Facilitator Shona Black said indicators such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels and drug prescribing all showed improved management of CHD patients.

She outlined several more improvements that could be offered if more funding was available, including introducing defibrillator machines to every local surgery and health centre.

The machines are widely recognised by the public through the ‘stand clear and shock’ scenarios in televised hospital dramas.

Dr Alex Watson, chair of the CHD steering group and a GP at Westgate Health Centre, said he didn’t think the public would understand that if their heart stopped in ASDA they would get access to a defibrillator but if that happened in their own doctor’s surgery there would not be a machine on site.

Some supermarkets and shopping centres locally do have defibrillators on site and staff trained to operate them.

Mrs Black said that while surgeries across the city were offering annual reviews of CHD patients, there was a variation in the attendance of patients.

Some patients did not attend when called in and non-attendance rates were noticeably higher in practices that served deprived areas.

“We need to think how we tackle these people, how we meet the needs of these patients,” said Mrs Black.

LHCC chairman and a GP at Hillbank Health Centre, Dr Charles Carney, said patients needed to be aware of the benefits of attending.

“If that is not clear to them they won’t see the need to attend,” said Dr Carney.

Dr Watson said community nurses had a big role to play but CHD work sometimes dropped down the list of priorities because of all the other priorities that arose in a busy general practice.