A top King’s College Hospital surgeon has said he would “never use an e-scooter” amid a sharp rise in injuries since they came onto London’s streets a few years ago.
Ash Vasireddy, a consultant orthopaedic trauma surgeon at the Denmark Hill hospital, said injuries from people coming off e-scooters are “a really big issue”.
Mr Vasireddy said: “Obviously e-scooters are much more prevalent now. The issue is [people] are travelling at a decent speed with minimal protection. When they come off they tend to land awkwardly and they do tend to have very severe injuries, some of which can be life-changing or life-threatening. Some can be life-changing injuries that mean people can’t walk normally.
“I would never use an e-scooter. I’m always tempted, but I’m too worried about other road users. It’s definitely a problem.” Mr Vasireddy added that he also would not ride a bike on London’s streets.
Some 196 patients came into King’s emergency department with injuries suffered during an e-scooter collision in 2020, a December 2021 report by transport safety charity Pacts found. Raju Ahluwalia, another orthopaedic surgeon at the hospital, said the increase in injuries was a “concern”.
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E-scooters, which first became popular in London last year, are mostly illegal to ride on public roads in the UK, although Southwark is among several London boroughs taking part in a trial scheme. The scheme lets people ride scooters that they have hired from Transport for London (TfL) on roads in the borough.
Mr Vasireddy was speaking after featuring on a Channel 4 documentary about London’s network of hospitals that treat people with severe traumatic injuries. King’s is part of the network and its helipad allows London’s air ambulance to take seriously injured people to the hospital quicker, saving lives.
One review of the series described it as “excruciating, sobering and often graphic”. If just watching the show is excruciating, how difficult must it be for surgeons like Mr Vasireddy?
“Since I’ve been working as an air ambulance doctor, I can pretty much remember all of the patients by face – there’s probably a couple of hundred now,” he said. “Many a time I think about it in the evening, it does make it difficult to get to sleep sometimes. You do kind of wake up in the middle of the night sometimes.”
From resus and ICU to surgery and rehabilitation, go behind the curtain at London's major trauma centres. Emergency begins tonight at 9pm. pic.twitter.com/k4sXNKkERe
— Channel 4 (@Channel4) February 28, 2022
Mr Vasireddy said he was now better at “parking” these thoughts before he gets home. “You struggle more at the start of the career, because you know a lot of it could just be anyone.” Discussing the horrible injuries he treats with colleagues also helps, he said. “It’s good to decompress with them, it’s good to discuss and share with them.”
He recalled spending “an entire clinic – three or four hours – with one guy who had devastating injuries to his leg. He wasn’t able to work, lost his house, didn’t know where he and his family were going to live. I think about things like that on my drive home from work.”
Mr Vasireddy said his work had changed his approach to life and he was now more cautious.
The key thing for me is that could be any one of us on another day. Someone who made a slightly wrong decision about when to cross a road, whether the volume was a bit too loud on your airpods. It could be any one of us…
“I’ve seen many people drive too fast past me on the motorway, and I’ve treated many patients who’ve driven normally but been hit by people driving too fast. That’s suddenly changed their life even through they had nothing to do with it.”
Despite the difficulties and challenges of his extraordinary job – which was made even more complicated by the pandemic – Mr Vasireddy said it was “a privilege”.
“The reason I like trauma is it’s a great opportunity to treat patients at their most vulnerable stage.”
You can watch the four-part series Emergency featuring Mr Vasireddy and the rest of the King’s College Hospital trauma team here.