Surgical Practice For Child Malformations

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30420, 20 April 1964, Page 9

Surgical Practice For Child Malformations

“In the eld days, we were apt to say ’Let the child grow up and then we’ll operate,-’ but now we want to deal with congenital malforma.tions at the earliest possible moment,” Dr. D. G. Walker, president of the British Dental Association, said in Christchurch. Dr. Walker, a consultant dental surgeon, is a research member of three hospital teams correcting malformations. “We are trying to establish a calendar of growth which, can be a guide to when we should operate to correct the various conditions,” said Dr. Walker. He is interested in malformations of the head as well as the teeth. Dr. Walker is on the staff of the Middlesex Hospital, the Royal Dental Hospital in Leicester square, and the Plastic Surgery and Jaw Unit at Stoke Manderville, Buckinghamshire.

He is in New Zealand to sound members of the New Zealand Dental Association on the possibility of resuming Commonwealth dental conferences, which have not

be'en held since before World War 11. The first, which would take about five years to organise, would be in Britain, but others could be in various parts of the Commonwealth. Dr. Walker has already “sown the seed” in Canada, and will later take the idea to other Commonwealth countries. Asked about the fluoridation of water supplies, Dr. Walker said he was not an expert on the subject, but there was no doubt fluoridation was of tremendous advantage as a preventive dental health measure. “All new developments are bound to meet with resistance, because people feel they are being forced into things; they are reluctant to face changes. But eventually, the idea becomes accepted—it is all a matter of time,” Dr. Walker said.