Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) is a dilation or swelling of the Aorta, the largest blood vessel in the abdomen.

This condition can be present in as many as 8% of men over the age of 65, but is considerably less common in women, with approximately four times as many occuring in men.

It is far more common in people who have been smokers, or who are at risk of heart disease for other reasons.

Aneurysms usually cause no symptoms at all unless they rupture, in which case only about 20% of people survive.

There has long been a debate over the value or otherwise of screening for prostate cancer, and to date no country has a national system for offering prostate cancer screening.

For many years, the evidence has largely been that screening for prostate cancer caused more harm than good, but several recent developments have helped to change things:

Great news - as of 1st March 2023, meningitis vaccines are now fully funded for some patient groups -

With our new and updated software has come a new patient portal link - the old connectmed links no longer work so to access our portal, please use https://www.connectmed.nz/provider/Sumner-Health-Centre

Did you know, the United Kingdom, Sweden, the United States of America, and Canada all offer one-off screening ultrasound scans to detect abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) in men aged 65 years? Although our cardiologists believe New Zealand should be offering our residents this test also, we currently have no government funded AAA screening program.

NOTICE - as we are currently experiencing very low demand for services with everyone locked down, we will be closing earlier than usual, at 17.00, rather than 17.30.We will open at our usual time once the level 4 state ends.We will also be giving some of our clinical staff extra time off to rest so that we can be fresh to treat you when the need arises.  This means your usual doctor may not be working their normal hours.Cases of COVID-19 continue to be very uncommon in Canterbury though, which is great news.Nonetheless, it is vitally important to keep your distance and wash your hands.Every

Coronavirus update 23 March 2020

This is an unusual news post as it is both a news post and guidance for our staff.

It is being put here so that everyone knows what is going on and why, and also how to provide feedback - all ideas are very welcome in these trying times.

Through all of this our purpose is to ensure that you spend as little time in our waiting room, possibly being exposed to others as possible, to protect our staff without whom we cannot make this work, and to do our best to deliver the highest quality healthcare we can, circumstances be damned.

Read on to see how your team is going to be managing things in the coming days to weeks:

As we hear of the first confirmed case of the novel coronavirus, covid-19 in New Zealand, we are receiving more and more enquiries about both this and the 'flu vaccine.

The 'Flu vaccine will not be available until 1st April this year.  We will be letting you know as soon as it comes into stock.  Having the whole family, especially children immunised is the best way to stop influenza spreading in our community.  Although the 'Flu vaccine provides NO protection against Covid-19, it does reduce the risk of getting sick and this will help both to ease worries over what may be a stressful period and of course the more people who are immunised, the fewer sick people will need to be managed in hospital, freeing resources in case there are large numbers of coronavirus cases.

Despite what you might hear in the media, this is NOT the zombie apocalypse and we are NOT all going to die.

We are receiving a few requests for information about how to manage the new virus that is making the news right now.  Although the chances are good that this will be a non-issue, there is a lot of public concern so we thought to bring you some information you could use to navigate the muddy waters.