Kings Park Hospital
Polmaise Road, Stirling, FK7 9JH DirectionsPhone
Opening hours
Mon - Fri 8am - 11pm
Patients are allowed one dedicated visitor subject to opening times and individual circumstances.
Car parking
Free parking on-site
Private Gastroenterology Services at The Kings Park Hospital in Stirling.
Consultant clinic appointments are easy to book at the hospital, and investigations are readily available, which means you can get an early diagnosis and a treatment plan tailored to your individual needs.
The hospital is easy to reach by car and public transport and serves patients from Forth Valley, Fife, Tayside and further afield.
You can see a Consultant Gastroenterologist if you have symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhoea, constipation, weight loss, rectal bleeding, vomiting, and difficulty swallowing. You could also ask their opinion if you’ve had abnormal blood results, for example, unusual liver function or unexplained low blood count (anaemia).
Our Consultant Gastroenterologists often see patients with the following conditions:
The sooner a gastroenterologist can establish a diagnosis, the sooner they can recommend a specialist treatment. Once the treatment has started, your consultant can mitigate the chances of complications from any underlying condition.
Some conditions like inflammatory bowel disease are progressive. So the faster you get a diagnosis and start treatment, the quicker doctors can arrest the symptoms and the disease’s progression.
If cancer or inflammatory bowel disease is not diagnosed early, medical therapy may not be effective, and surgery may be the only way forward.
We offer face to face and telephone consultations. During an initial consultation, your gastroenterologist will go through your medical history and discuss your symptoms with you. They will listen to your concerns and consider the impact they have on your daily life.
Your Consultant Gastroenterologist may be able to provide you with a diagnosis during your initial consultation. However, they will most likely need to carry out investigations to look into your symptoms more closely before confirming a diagnosis.
The most common diagnostic procedures our Consultant Gastroenterologists perform at The Kings Park Hospital are:
Gastroenterologists use these diagnostic tools to investigate unexplained symptoms, understand them, and distinguish one pathology from another.
You are required to fast for these diagnostic procedures, and the hospital team will advise you of the details. Most people have the tests carried out under local anaesthetic and sedation, but you can choose to opt out of sedation if you prefer to be awake.
A colonoscopy also requires you to take bowel preparation medication (a type laxative) the day before your procedure.
After the diagnostic test, your consultant will go through the results with you, what they mean in layman’s terms and how this may determine treatment.
There’s a possibility that you’ll need additional investigations. For example, your consultant may also send you for imaging, such as a computerised tomography (CT) scan, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan or an ultrasound. Scans are helpful if your consultant needs to see areas of your stomach, small intestine or bowel that they cannot see from the above diagnostic procedures.
Ultrasounds, including those of the gall bladder and liver, are carried out at Kings Park Hospital. However, should your consultant advise you need an MRI or CT scan, they will refer you to our sister hospital, The Ross Hall Hospital in Glasgow, for this. Once you have had any scans, you’ll return to Kings Park Hospital to review the results with your consultant gastroenterologist.
If you need surgery, your Consultant Gastroenterologist will bring in a specialist general surgeon who will perform the surgery at Kings Park Hospital. Our gastroenterologists work very closely with our Consultant General Surgeons, and they often refer patients to one another.
Should diagnostic tests fail to account for symptoms such as abdominal discomfort or diarrhoea, your consultant gastroenterologist may seek a dietician’s opinion to see whether dietary exclusion in a controlled manner could lead to improvements.
Early diagnosis is essential. Many inflammatory bowel diseases affecting the intestine, such as Crohn’s disease, can rumble on for years and IBDs run the risk of becoming progressively more complicated if not treated early.