[Report 1952] / School Medical Officer of Health, Anglesey County Council.

  • Anglesey (Wales). County Council. no2003102100.
Date:
1952
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1952] / School Medical Officer of Health, Anglesey County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/30 (page 15)
    Orthoptic Exercises for the Treatment of Squint are given at Bangor for cases referred by the consulting Ophthalmologists. Details of this service are appended. No. receiving treatment on the 1st January, 1952 .... 63 No. of new cases referred 31 No. discharged after having treatment 12 No. discharged from failure to attend 9 No. receiving treatment at 31st December, 1952 73 Total attendances for treatment 893 This form of treatment is prolonged, and the number of de- faulters in unfortunately large. Although operative treatment may give a good aesthetic result, orthoptic exercises are needed if the function of the squinting eye is to be restored. The fact that this treatment can only be offered at the present time at one centre (outside the county) no doubt contributes to the high defaulter rate. The detection of defects of vision depends largely on the use of Snellen’s test types which, as is well known, consist of alphabetical characters arranged in random fashion but in groups of decreasing size of type. Because the majority of small children do not know their letters’’ when they are first examined by the school doctor this test cannot be applied to them, and although variants of the test are available, designed for the testing of illiterates, these tests suffer from distinct drawbacks when large numbers of children have to be examined. Unless the child displays some unusual behaviour, attributable to poor eyesight, a defect of vision may therefore pass unrecognised until the second routine medical inspection some years later. Early in the year under review arrangements were made to bridge this gap. School nurses now carry out routine eye testing of the 7 years-old group shortly before a routine medical inspection is due at the school. Any child whose vision is suspect is referred to the doctor at the school medical inspection. 376 children were examined under these arrangements during the year, of which number 60 were referred to the medical officers.