BUSY DENTAL HOSPITAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20842, 8 April 1931, Page 10

BUSY DENTAL HOSPITAL.

200 PATIENTS A DAY. SOME WAITING THREE YEARS. [FROM OUll OWN CORRESPONDENT. ] SYDNEY, April 2. The Sydney Dental Hospital treats, on an average, 200 patients a day. From this rush a strange position has arisen. Accommodation is so inadequate, according to the secretary, that many patients have been waiting nearly three years for attention. "Of course, when they get to this stage," said the secretary, " they usually register again; but, even so, they have to wait. We are already booked up for dentures till tho end of January next year." This means that a patient applying for a set of false teeth to-day tvould not be supplied until February, 1932. The most noticeablo congestion is in tho extraction room'. Here, owing to luck of space, there are only three chairs, but tho average crowd waiting to have teeth taken out numbers about 200 every afternoon. If half the number receive attention daily it means that each dentist attends to about 33 patients, and pulls some 150 teeth. "Wo have one or two girls among tho students," said the secretary, " Tliey make splendid extractionists, as they seern to bo less sensitive than men."

Since 1923 attendance at the Dental Hospital has trebled. Figures show that seven years ago 20.000 people were attended to, but in 1930 the number was 60,000. Of this total 2412 were fillings, 5375 were dentures and plates, 16,789 wcro extractions, while consultations, dressings, etc., numbered 33.588. A significant factor in these statistics is a decrease in applications for dentures at hospital rates, and an increase in tho number of freo dentures. Up to the end of 1929, according to the secretary, free dentures formed 55 per cent, of the total in this section. To-day tho percentage is 95. Practically all extractions are given free.