[Report 1951] / School Medical Officer of Health, Salford.

  • Salford (England). Council.
Date:
1951
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1951] / School Medical Officer of Health, Salford. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The severely deafened child is extremely well catered for in Salford where the class for the partially deaf continues successfully. We also are able to provide lip reading classes in the later afternoon for children who are not deaf enough to require removal from a normal school but who yet need extra help. We could help many children more quickly if minor procedures could be done on out-patients. For instance, antral lavages in children over five or six can be done with no more discomfort than is involved by a visit to the Dentist. These sinusitis cases could then be dealt with almost at once. Now¬ adays the child has to wait for a bed in Flope Flospital—and may be waiting for months. There are small ear operations such as myringotomy, removal of aural polyp and incision of boils, which could be dealt with similarly. Further help in the Physiotherapy Department is increasing the benefit to many children. There is a great need for speeding up treatment by speech therapy. It is good to know that a second Speech Therapist has recently been appointed. When there is a long waiting list for these cases the children become fixed in their bad habits and grow more self-conscious of their defects, with the result that treatment is then more difficult and more prolonged. The Pre-Tonsillectomy Clinic. Many experts in the ear, nose, and throat field consider that tonsillectomy is hardly ever an urgent operation. Full clinical investigation should be made, prior dental treatment carried out and examination, especially of the sinuses, be done before a final decision regarding the necessity for tonsillectomy is made. In carefully selected cases, however, it is agreed that “ there is no single operation in children’s medicine more successful or one which shows such dramatic results as tonsillectomy.” During 1951, 395 medical examinations were made by the paediatrician at our Pre-Tonsillectomy Clinic. These sessions are held in a room which is adjacent to the clinic of the consultant ear, nose and throat specialist, a most useful arrangement when a second opinion is necessary. Many of the children were reviewed at intervals during the year, and nine names were removed from the list of children awaiting operation. Consultant Skin Clinic. This clinic is held onec weekly at Regent Road on Thursdays at 2-30 p.m., and provides facilities for the diagnosis and treatment of skin disorders in Salford school children. The overwhelming majority of cases can be treated fairly simply and easily as out-patients without loss of valuable time at school. There remains however, the cases for which hospitalisation is needed, and these include the perennial problem of the allergic child with severe infantile eczema often co-existent with asthma. The mother of a large family which includes a child with this distressing affliction is often brought near to breakdown by continued loss of sleep and worry over the child’s condition. Severe cases in children such as these are benefited enormously by periodic short stays away from the family and in hospital. Occasional cases of obscure or doubtful aetiology also are seen, and for these also hospitalisation, with its facilities for full observation and investiga¬ tion, is preferable.
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