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20
MASS RADIOGRAPHY
I am grateful to the Organising Secretary of the South West London
Mass X-Ray Service who has kindly supplied the following report on the
activities of the Service in Chelsea during 1962:-
A number of visits were made to the Borough by mobile Mass X-Ray
Units of the South West London Service during the year under review. These
included the annual visit to the Chelsea College of Technology where nearly
five hundred students and staff were x-rayed. The College of St. Mark and
St. John was also visited in conjunction with the London County Council's
B.C.G. innoculation scheme, so that all the positive re-actors to the
tuberculin skin tests could be x-rayed.
Two visits were paid to John Lewis Clearings (Peter Jones Ltd), and
to Messrs. Foster Wheeler, and one to the Power Generating Station at
Lots Road.
Two hundred and fifty men in the over forty-five years of age group
who live and/or work in Chelsea, are making use of the six monthly service
which was started in 1958 to provide regular chest x-ray examinations for
this section of the population, in an effort to detect more cases of lung
cancer, at the earlier stages of the disease. In connection with this
service the mobile Unit came to a site in Britten Street in May, and to one
in Manresa Road in November.
Owing to difficulties in obtaining suitable accommodation, it was not
possible to open a temporary public Mass X-Ray Centre, but many residents
of Chelsea found it convenient to come to the Central Mass X-Ray Centre,
at the Western Hospital, Seagrave Road, S.W.6. This centre is open all the
year round to everyone over the age of fifteen, irrespective of where they
work or live, on Wednesday afternoons and evenings between 2-4 p.m. and
5-7 p.m. No appointments are needed for these public sessions, but
ante-natal patients, and children between the ages of 6 and 8 years referred
by a clinic or general practitioner are x-rayed at other times, and are
required to make an appointment beforehand. Children 8 to 14 years old
can be brought to the public sessions, provided they have an x-ray request
form from a general practitioner. In 1962, 15,000 people were x-rayed
at this centre.
The three units of the South West London Mass X-Ray Service, which
covers the boroughs of Battersea, Chelsea, Fulham, Lambeth, Wandsworth and
Westminster carried out 99,000 mass x-ray examinations during the year under
review, as a result of which 317 cases were referred to chest clinics with
radiological abnormalities suggestive of clinically significant tuberculosis,
and 111 cases were referred which were suggestive of neoplasm requiring
further investigation. In addition 253 other examinees were discovered to
have significant abnormalities.