Medecine

source: le Monde

author: Paul Bankimoun

translation: doxa-louise

At Lariboisière Hospital, "it was war medecine"

Professor Rémy Nizard is an orthopedic surgeon at Lariboisière Hospital. He was
responsible for the patients from the November 13 attacks.

Which patients were sent to Lariboisière Hospital?

All of our teams were on duty yesterday, because our hospital center is situated
smack in the zone which received most attacks.

We saw many who were present at the Bataclan at the time of the attacks: twenty
at Lariboisière, some thirty at Saint-Louis, which is situated across from the Le
petit Cambodge restaurant, also, the object of an attack. There were, notably,
people who came in on their own with upper limb injuries.

What kinds of injuries did you see?

The people we saw presented injuries of variable seriousness. Some were very severely
hurt: they had received a bullet in the head or neck, or with a splintering of the eye
socket which might mean loss of the eye.

We saw many fractures to the leg, the thighbone, the ankle, the humerus. One man
had received a bullet that went through his knee before fracturing the tibia. These are
injuries due to high energy projectiles. To this we must add major neurological legions
which might well have fonctional consequences.

How did you deal with this influx of the seriously wounded?

It was war medecine. I was a surgery intern at the time of the Attacks on the rue de
Rennes in Paris (1986). This reminded me of what I had seen then. The difference
being that now we are better equipped.

The care teams were wonderful, doctors and nurses. This might look like nothing but
we needed, for example, personnel to strerilize the boxes of surgical instruments,
without which it would have been impossible to treat the next set of patients. This is
essential. Personnel came back to pitch in, including many who had quit to
work in  private practice.