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ren (27.5% of the school population) and providing treatment at
the 14,000 attendances.
Although undue emphasis should not be placed upon statistical
evaluation of a children's clinical service, it is encouraging to note
that, for each tooth extracted on account of caries, there were 53.7
fillings of permanent teeth and 9.2 for milk teeth. At first sight this
latter ratio would appear to be low but it must be viewed against
a background of a high percentage of extractions arising from
broken down roots or inflammation resulting from mobile baby
teeth prior to their being shed. The figure of 1,000 emergencies
dealt with reveals not only public confidence in the service but,
sadly also reflects the poor dental health of the child population.
It was indeed unfortunate that, despite efforts of our auxiliary
and a period of "locum" assistance, illness and other circumstances
beyond our control conspired to prevent us from using our already
inadequate potential to its fullest extent.
Earlier Reports have stressed the important role that dental
health education plays in dentistry in general and in children's
preventive dentistry in particular. Our now firmly established
programme of close liaison with schools including "followup"
meetings after school inspections and the fullest of
preventive instructions to patients and parents (as outlined in previous
years), continued during 1971. We are deeply grateful for
the I.L.E.A.'s help in the dental health education field but, of
necessity, the substantial routine work had to be undertaken by
our own dental auxiliary. Thankful though we are for the active
part played by the staff of many of the Borough's primary schools
in dental health education, we must recognise that our resources
of one part-time auxiliary are woefully deficient for this most
influential aspect of dentistry, tied as they are to the availability
of twin-surgery clinics.
Gratification from our recently established orthodontic service
is somewhat marred by the fact that it is subject to the same
restricting circumstances as the rest of the school dental service
and demand has similarly exceeded available facilities. Occupation
of our limited surgery accommodation for the very necessary
routine treatments has restricted our highly qualified orthodontic
specialist to only 2 sessions per week with the result that 1971
saw a "build-up" to massive proportions of a waiting list for
initial orthodontic investigations prior to treatment. Attempts to