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71
Dental Services.
With the re-arrangement which took place in the early part of the
year, no children attending schools outside this district are now treated
by the dental officers who work in this area. On the other hand, though,
there are a number of schools whose pupils are still treated by the dental
officer working at the Northwood Clinic, while the pupils of Stag Lane
School are attended to by the dental surgeon attached to the Wembley
Stag Lane Clinic.
There are five dental officers working in Harrow, four full-time and
one almost full-time. They work at the Alexandra Avenue, Elmwood
Avenue and Marlborough Hill Clinics, at the Roxeth Dental Clinic and
at Stanburn School. Each dental officer has the assistance of a lay dental
attendant, who does the clerical work and assists in the running of the
dental clinics.
The plan on which the work is carried out is that each dental officer
attends each school on a rota. The parents are advised that the dental
officer proposes attending the school to examine a number of children.
A high proportion of them need treatment. Sufficient are examined then
to provide work for the dental officers for the succeeding two or three
weeks. Before these have all been treated another lot are examined.
The aim is to examine each school child once a year. The number of
dental officers, though one time sufficient for this area, is no longer so.
At the best of times the schedule could be adhered to only if there were
no absences for sickness or other reasons. Most dental officers are treating
maternity and child welfare cases as well, which means that they have
that much less time for the school children, while the raising of the
school-leaving age will add further to the numbers to be seen to. The
difficulty in adding to the staff is one arising from failure to obtain
accommodation in which to house the extra dental surgery. The district
requires probably not an additional one but two more dental officers.
This perhaps would enable a start to be made on examining the teeth of
all the children, not once in the twelve months, but once in six months.
It might be thought that such an arrangement would be extravagant
on the time of the dentists. This is not so, though, because if children are
examined at intervals as short as this any caries discovered would be in
the earliest stages and far less time would be required in the actual
treatment.
Most extractions are done under a local anaesthetic. In some
cases, though, a general anaesthetic is necessary. Periodically, then,
each dental officer has a general anaesthetic session, the anaesthetic
(usually gas) being administered by a medical practitioner. At these
sessions a trained nurse is present, usually one of the school nurses.
Some children who grow up with ill-fitting teeth are embarrassed for
life. Most authorities for years, then, have made arrangements for at
least the worst of these cases to be treated by regulation. Up to this
any such children referred to the dental officers have attended the
Orthodontic Clinic at Sudbury. In the early part of 1917, arrangements
were made for an orthodontic surgeon to work in the district.
In spite of the very full dental facilities available some children
suffer from toothache or there develop other reasons that they need urgent