BBC Hospital show realities of Liverpool knife crime laid bare as young man stabbed in heart – Liverpool Echo

The grave-reality of how dangerous a stabbing can be was laid bare on tonight's BBC Hospital.

The fifth series ofHospital has returned to Merseyside to chart the day-to-day life of sixNHS Trusts across the entire city of Liverpool.

As figures for knife crime nationally hit a record high, Merseyside has seen a doubling in the last five years.

In Aintree Hospitals major trauma centre, viewers saw a 15-strong team are trying to save the life of a young man who has just arrived by emergency helicopter.

He had been stabbed in the chest and was one of three stabbings to arrive during the day.

After the patient was sedated, the medical team scanned him to find the full extent of the internal damage that has necessitated a transfusion of eight units of blood.

This results revealed that the weapon had reached the patients heart and caused bleeding into its protective sac, preventing his heart from beating properly.

With his life hanging in the balance, the patient was blue-lit 15 minutes across the city to the Liverpool Heart & Chest Hospital for emergency open-heart surgery.

Cardiac surgeon, Julius Asante-Siaw, had to release the pressure around the patients heart and repair the damage that the weapon has caused.

Julius said: "He's about half-a-centimetre away of being dead at the scene."

Viewers were then shown clips of the surgery being performed by the surgeons at Liverpool Heart & Chest Hospital.

This included scenes of a distressing nature, showing the horrific wound and large amount of blood lost by the patient.

Luckily Julius managed to stop the bleeding and repaired the wound to the heart.

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BBC Hospital show realities of Liverpool knife crime laid bare as young man stabbed in heart - Liverpool Echo