Ferguson J W, Langford J W, Davenport P J
Selly Oak Hospital, Birmingham.
Dent Update. 1997 Jan-Feb;24(1):15-7.
General dental practitioners and community dental officers may need to consider several factors when referring patients to the consultant orthodontic service. In Birmingham, a local professional group incorporating representatives from both primary care and secondary care (consultant) services have drawn up a set of formal referral guidelines. The purpose of the exercise was to encourage the most appropriate use of the consultant service so that its resources could be directed towards those in greatest need. In this paper, the factors which determine the patients requiring referral are discussed; a second article will deal with the actual process of referral.
普通牙科医生和社区牙科官员在将患者转诊至正畸专科顾问服务时可能需要考虑几个因素。在伯明翰，一个由初级保健和二级保健（顾问）服务部门的代表组成的地方专业团体制定了一套正式的转诊指南。此举的目的是鼓励最恰当地使用顾问服务，以便将其资源用于最有需要的人。本文讨论了决定患者是否需要转诊的因素；第二篇文章将论述转诊的实际流程。
