Military trauma doc reveals how Manchester’s heroic medics faced horrific ‘war zone’ injuries in wake of bomb attack

MANCHESTER'S heroic doctors and nurses were faced with "war zone injuries" in the wake of the Ariana Grande concert attack, a military trauma medic revealed.

Casualties - most of them teenagers - were rushed to hospital with devastating injuries after British-born terrorist Salman Abedi, 22, detonated a homemade device inside the venue.

The killer is understood to have used a nail or pressure cooker bomb to have the most catastrophic impact on innocent fans as they left the gig.

Major Tom Konig said many of the victims will have had organs ruptured by the force of the explosion as well as flesh torn by shrapnel blasted from the device.

The Royal London Hospital trauma surgeon told , doctors "go for the injuries that kill people first," and initially teams would have carried out "damage-control surgery".

He added that an IED can have the potential for massive blood loss and paramedics will have rushed to stop the bleeding.

Major Konig said: "That may involve simple things such as putting on a tourniquet or bandaging a wound or amputation stump in order to get surgical control.”

He also explained that the depth shrapnel will have penetrated the body will depend on how close a victim was to the bomb.

If they were stood just five metres away it might pass right through but at 50 metres it might lodge in their body and need to be removed later.

Karim Brohi, chairman of Trauma Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London, added that those closest to the blast will have been killed outright while other injuries might be from the blast itself or being hit by debris in the arena.

Adrian Boyle, an A&E consultant and member of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “When nail bombs go off, often bits of the metal go through the [bomber] and carry bits of flesh with them into whoever they hit."

A bomb can also stir up dirt that could lodge into exposed tissue and create infection control problems and Dr Boyle explained that medics have to think about exposure to blood-borne viruses, such as hepatitis C.

Dr Boyle also said the involvement of children will have created an extra challenge as medics will have had to calculate smaller doses of painkillers.

Major Konig said patients are likely to remain in intensive care for up to 48 hours while they regain strength before what could be a 10-hour operation.

He paid tribute to the skill of the doctors for their work so far, but added: “We may still see deaths over the next few days as patients succumb to overwhelming infection.”

The hospitals are expected to be busy with surgery for the next two or three weeks and patients could remain in hospital for three months or more, Professor Brohi said.

A major incident was declared shortly after the attack at about 10.30pm on Monday night and 60 ambulances attended the scene.

Victims were taken to eight hospitals across Manchester - which had rehearsed a similar scenario just a month earlier, Jon Rouse, of the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership, told the newspaper.

In total, 59 patients were taken to hospital: nine to Manchester Royal, six to Salford, six to Wythenshawe, 12 to Manchester Children’s, six to Stepping Hill, eight to Royal Bolton, seven to Royal Oldham and five to North Manchester.

At least 22 people were killed in the blast, including a brave aunt who shielded her 11-year-old niece from nail-bomb blast, two mum pals who were waiting in the foyer of the Ariana Grande concert, and an eight-year-old girl whose critically ill mum doesn’t even know her daughter’s fate.

Sick terrorist Salman Abedi, 22, was unmasked as Theresa May raised the UK threat level to “critical” for the first time in 10 years and said she may deploy armed soldiers on the streets because another terror attack could be “imminent”.

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