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104
Visitors 3,182 visits for Clinic purposes. In addition, the Health
Visitors made 280 primary visits for the purpose of the Notification
Register.
Patients requiring home nursing or surgical dressings are
attended to by nurses from the Croydon Nursing Service, In
arrangement with that organisation, and 582 such visits were made
during the year.
Contact Examination.
Contacts are those persons who are living with, or have been
in prolonged and intimate association with a case of Tuberculosis
The object of the examination is two-fold. Firstly, to ascertain if
the contact has become infected and. secondly, to discover if the
origin of the disease in the patient may be found in his associates.
Not very infrequently a member of a family who has been thought
for years to have been suffering from Bronchitis, is in reality
suffering from Tuberculosis, and through the lack of proper precautions
has infected one or more individuals around him.
It is advisable to get a complete examination of all contacts
and not only those who have developed symptoms.
If the individual continues to live in contact with the patient
repeated examinations with radiography seem to be necessary if
the supervision is to have any value at all.
617 appointments for examination were offered to new contacts
during 1935, but only 343 new contacts attended and were
examined.
The importance of contact examination as a tme preventive
measure is not appreciated by the public. In this matter the family
practitioner could be of much assistance.