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57
Number of extractions without anaesthetic 821
Number of Dressings 40
Number of Fillings 1,196
Number in which scaling performed 21
Number of children to whom gas was administered 179
Number of children re-inspected 954
The total number of children dealt with by the dentists at
the School Clinic was 1,499, which included 51 non-routine cases
requiring immediate treatment.
Dental Inspection and Treatment.
The Board of Education have been accustomed to recommend
that children between 6 and 8 years of age should receive first
consideration in any scheme for dental treatment. This age-group
appears to have been chosen having regard to the physiological
development of the teeth and the period of greatest activity,
and not particularly having regard to what are the conditions
actually found in the mouths of school children before the age of
six years. Between the age of 6 and 8 years would be a suitable time
if children at other ages could not be treated and especially
if there was not so much advanced caries and sepsis in the children
when they enter school at the age of 5 years.
In Ealing, the age-group treated by the dentists is 6 to 8 years,
all children treated being afterwards kept under dental supervision
during their school days, but so many children between 5 and 6
years of age have shown markedly septic mouths,accompanied by poor
nutrition, that they have been treated as non-routine and urgent
cases. The treatment of so many non-routine and urgent cases
has tended to upset the general arrangements for the routine
cases to such an extent that one has been impressed with the importance
of dealing with the children at 5 years, in other words,
all entrants, in place of the 6 to 8 years group; not only from the
necessity to the child, but from the administrative aspect.
Further, as regards the administrative aspect, it has to be
noted that in the course of routine school medical inspection the
teachers have to supply a list of all the entrants during the
year since the last inspection and of dental inspection a list of
all the children between the ages of 6 and 8 years of age.