[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Haringey].

  • Haringey (London, England). London Borough.
Date:
[1971?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: [Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Haringey]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    84/108 (page 76)
    Ophthalmic Clinics There are three ophthalmic clinics in the Borough, at which seven sessions are held each week. Towards the end of 1969 Stuart Crescent Health Centre was opened, and the ophthalmic clinic sessions for Wood Green children, which had been held temporarily at Lordship Lane Medical Centre, were transferred to the new Health Centre. Two full-time orthoptists work at the school ophthalmic clinics in conjunction with and under the direction of the consultant ophthalmologists. Dr. T.G. Kletz, consultant ophthalmologist to the Lordship Lane Clinic, Tottenham, reports as follows on the year's work at the clinic:— The ophthalmic clinic at Lordship Lane, as in previous years, sees mainly children referred on account of visual or ocular muscle defects. There are three ophthalmic sessions weekly, and a full-time orthoptist is in attendance. Continuation of the ethnic survey took place during the year, with the following results — 1. Children attending the clinic — 44.9% were native — 55.1% were immigrant or of immigrant origin. 2. Of the children attending for the first time, the comparative figures are — 36% native; 64% immigrant. The immigrant section consisted of — 47.9% West Indian 17.9% Cypriot 16.3% Irish 7.1% Indian 10.8% Others. 3. The figures for myopia were — Native — 24.5% of cases seen were myopic West Indian — 47% of cases seen were myopic Immigrants as a whole — 31.5% of cases seen were myopic. 4. The incidence of high myopia in young children was again almost totally in the West Indians, with 16 cases out of 54 myopes being over 10 dioptres and up to 18 dioptres. There were 2 cases amongst the Cypriots and 1 case in the native children. During the year an exceptionally high number of cases were referred as squints or strabismus, and of these 40 cases had neither squint nor refractive error needing correction. A further 10 cases were found to have refractive errors but no squint. These were out of a total of 370 new cases referred for all reasons. Mr. E.M.G. Galton, Consulting Ophthalmologist to the Stuart Crescent Clinic, retired in November 1970 and was replaced by Dr. A.Z. Abdeen who started sessions at Stuart Crescent in December 1970. Mr. Galton has kindly furnished the following report on the work at the clinic during 1970:— Work at the new Clinic started at the beginning of 1970. It made an immediate appeal to both parents and staff. A ttendances have increased considerably. The new system in which the Orthoptist, Mrs. Conn, visits the schools to assist in sight-testing has had considerable success. Infants with low degrees of squint have been detected and referred to the Clinic for treatment. In the past these cases have tended to slip through the net with disastrous results to the vision in the affected eye. Mrs. Conn has used the Sheridan-Gardiner vision test, which has been found to be quite accurate from about 3 to 3% years. I feel this test and orthoptic screening should be more widely used. Dr. Peswani, Consultant Ophthalmologist for the Weston Park Clinic, Hornsey, reports as follows:— The clinic was continued with 2 weekly sessions. During the year the attendances were as under:— Under5 year Over 5 years Totals Total Attendances 129 1159 1288 New Cases 61 380 441 Error of refraction (including squints) 26 668 694 , There were 44 amongst the new cases who needed orthoptic investigations and treatment. 76