SPASTIC CHILD'S TRAINING

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26201, 26 August 1950, Page 2

SPASTIC CHILD'S TRAINING

OPINIONS OF HARLEY STREET DOCTOR

The idea of institutions designed to take the spastic child out of his family permanently or for long periods is condemned by a New Zealander who has become a Harley street orthopaedist, specialising in the treatment of poliomyelitis and congenital deformities in children. He is Mr J. C. R. Hindenach, M.D., F.R.C.S., who in 1928, at Otago University. won a medical travelling scholarship to England—at that time the oniy such scholarship awarded each year.

After a tour of America to study the treatment of poliomyelitis, he is at present in New Zealand on holiday and is visiting his parents in Timaru. In- a recent interview Mr Hindenach referred to the care of spastic children. He said: “It is a parents’

problem. Quite definitely these children must be treated at home unless they are so mentally deficient and paralysed that they are not going to be able to take an interest in life at all.”

He considered the right approach to the problem was the setting up of institutions where the children could be taken for from three months to a year and the parents shown how the children were being trained.

This applied not only to spastic children who were capable of becoming wholly or partially independent, but to those who were just capable of being taught to dress and wash and to move about inside the house. “Very few of these children are mentally deficient, although they may look so just because they are not able to express themselves clearly.’’ Mr Hindenach said. Early diagnosis and treatment were of vital importance, said Mr Hindenach. Nowadays it had become possible to pick the spastic child in the first nine months. If spastic trouble were diagnosed early, and if the child were properly encouraged in using his limbs, fixed deformity requiring surgery should not occur. The essential need was for trained physiotherapists, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, physicians, and. lastly, surgeons. Surgery could not help where the preliminary work had not been done.