“It wasn’t a medical miracle—we made our own luck”: lessons from London and Manchester terror attacks

Last week London’s St Mary’s Hospital had to declare a major incident after a terror attack on an Underground train at Parsons Green. The explosion once again highlighted the challenges for doctors and medical teams—hospitals in London and Manchester have already been tested by four major terror attacks in 2017: Westminster Bridge, Manchester Arena, London Bridge, and Finsbury Park mosque.

The Parsons Green victims mainly sustained burns, but each of the attacks have presented different challenges. The Westminster Bridge attacker rammed a vehicle into pedestrians, and most patients brought to hospital had blunt trauma. At London Bridge, the attackers used both a vehicle and knives and many patients presented with stab wounds. In Manchester the attacker detonated a shrapnel loaded device and patients presented with complex, multiorgan injuries.

At a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine in London earlier this month, doctors who treated those patients shared what they have learnt. The NHS was widely praised for its response; however, Duncan Bew, a trauma specialist at King’s College Hospital in south London where many of those injured in the Westminster and London Bridge attacks were treated, told the meeting: “We cannot rest on our laurels. Because we have done well in this incident, it doesn’t mean we’ll do well in the next one.”