Early Checks Can Prevent Later Pain
Newcastle Herald
Tuesday June 3, 2008
ANNUAL check-ups at schools around Australia are needed to help improve the early diagnosis and treatment of scoliosis, a developmental deformity that is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to treat without surgical intervention.
But if scoliosis is identified in its early stages, intervention such as casting or bracing can minimise the deformity.Australian girls aged 13 receive a brochure about scoliosis to take home to their parents. But is a brochure once in a while enough? Over many years government funding has been focusing on obesity. Consequently, other serious illnesses including scoliosis have been sidelined. Governments are ignoring the fact that if not enough funding is allocated to do regular checks on children for scoliosis in their early school years, it can go undetected. As they grow the scoliosis worsens and when it's finally identified they are in too much pain or too old to undergo surgery or even physiotherapy. The brochure relies on parents reading it then checking their child to decide if the child needs to visit a doctor or hospital. Not all parents would do this.First, in rural areas transport and distance may be hindering access to doctors and hospitals. Second, some parents who rarely see their children because they are so busy working barely have time to read the brochure.This means that scoliosis might not be detected in the early years. Experts have stated that if there were more checks on children in their growing years, the number of severe scoliosis cases would drop dramatically. So why isn't the government doing anything about it? Many types of medical checks were once performed each year and children were diagnosed, treated and followed up. The ongoing pattern of stopping this and other medical checks for school children has been a decision based on money, not looking after young children. This will continue to be the case unless parents and the medical profession pressure politicians to return to the era where tests for scoliosis and other conditions were the norm.
© 2008 Newcastle Herald
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