The Medical Assessment of Mentally Retarded Children in Hospital

Abstract

Most subnormal patients in hospitals are not there because they require active hospital treatment. Leck, Gordon and McKeown (1967), Pilkington (1966) and Tizard (1964) have suggested that respectively 0·4 per cent, 10 per cent and 12 per cent of the hospitalized patients they studied were admitted as the result of medical advice, or were in need of ‘detailed specialist day to day diagnosis, care and treatment’. This study is part of a computer evaluation of medical data concerning 285 severely retarded children, admitted to hospital for very varying periods during 1964–1966. Altogether 375 admissions took place but of these 86 were readmissions, so there were 289 ‘primary’ admissions, 4 of whom had no traceable documentation, thus 285 (76 per cent) of the 375 admissions were studied.