Public Health Nurse Suspects Turn in Eye

di11on

Hi Folks,

Our 11 month old little treasure had her 9 month check up 2 months ago. The Public Health Nurse said she had a slight turn in her eye that would need to be followed up.

Apparrently she needs to be referred to a specialist and we'll get a letter at some point down the line.

My question is this - can I trust the system to follow this up appropriately or would it be of benefit to us and to baby to follow this up ourselves independently? I.e. are the waiting lists such that we would be disadvantaging our child and decreasing the likelihood of this getting treated effectively by not looking after it ourselves?

Any experience and/or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Nevyn

The system isn't bad as long as you keep tabs amd make sure that if letters are sent that the people they were sent to got them.

She is young yet and her eyes won't settle until she is at least two and then she may need further assement.

deisemum

Been there with my older boy.

One of my friends noticed that my son occasionally had a slight turn, it wasn't very obvious. My first reaction was to go to a private consultation. I was shocked to discover that there was nearly a 4 month waiting list to go private, I thought I'd be seen within a week

About 6 weeks before appointment I was at a function and my PHN was there. She asked after my children and I casually mentioned about his slight squint. She said to leave it with her and I received an appointment for 3 working days later for a public examination.

I can honestly say that the public system in my area is very good. It took 3 appointments before they noticed the squint but they kept bringing him back every couple of months just to be certain and keep an eye (excuse the pun) and then it was only very slight but as he got older his squint became more noticable.

He had routine appointments over a 7 - 8 year period, they were very thorough and he went between the local clinic and the hospital. His glasses, patches were all covered and I only had to pay a surplus when he go bifocals at one stage.

His treatment would involves phases of wearing the patch for a couple of hours, wearing glasses at certain stages of his treatment.

On the odd occasion that he broke them I just picked up a perscription from the eye clinic and got replacements.

There were occasions when part of his care involved seeing the same consultant that we'd have seen privately so we knew things were fine. I reckon we saved a fortune.

Last year I was reading some conflicting info about squints on another site and got into a bit of a panic doubting the public treatment so I made an appointment with a private consultant. She was very pleased with how my son's treatment by the public system worked. She explained that he has very good control of his eye muscles and that it would only be noticable if he was very tired or drunk (when he's older)

Wait and see what the specialist has to say. Sometimes a young baby or toddler may appear to have a squint but it can be a fold of skin on the bridge of the nose side of the eye. As the child get older and the fold of skin goes where it should then the appearance of a squint is gone.

Word of caution. If you go public you get a perscription for free frames and free perscription upto a certain value so that if you want private frames you'd pay a top up.

When you go to the opticians to order the glasses be sure to ask to see the public ones. They are more colourful and have more child appeal than the private ones. A certain chain of opticians will not put themselves out to show you the public ones. We only discovered them by chance when my son pulled out a drawer the first time we went for glasses.

Everytime (without fail) that we went back for glasses as he got bigger or the perscription was changed this same chain of opticians would try the hard sell and try and get us to privately purchase a spare pair that cost £69 punts at the time. :mad:
THing is if he needed a replacement pair you just get a perscription for a free pair from the clinic.

Orion

Nurse said the same for one of my children at that age. Their eyes haven't fully developed yet so the nurse is most likely just being careful and there probably is nothing to worry about. We got the letter a few weeks later and saw the specialist in the same health centre. Give the health centre a call and ask when you're likely to be called. It's going to be different in each area but they will get to you.