This service aims to improve care of gout across all NHS Lothian health services. Patients with gout are usually seen within general practice, however may also attend urgent/unscheduled care or be admitted to hospital. The gout liaison service will reach out to patients identified both in the community and in hospital to offer consistent advice and support.
Achieving control of urate levels is the key to reducing gout flares and can be achieved for most patients with the preventive medicine allopurinol.
Information on the causes and treatment of gout is available on the Find out about gout page.
We will contact patients who have started allopurinol in the community, or been given allopurinol whilst in hospital, and offer access to a remote urate monitoring service.
Research in Edinburgh has shown that supported self-monitoring of urate leads to much better outcomes for gout than the usual way of delivering care and with the support of the NHS Lothian Charity we will explore providing urate self-monitoring to patients in Lothian.
