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Hospital scene after marathon was like a battle zone
Boston Globe

A city whose hospitals and physicians are renowned for research and cutting-edge surgical innovations faced a starkly different challenge Monday, treating scores of injuries more commonly found in a war zone.

Patients arrived at Boston hospitals with limbs blown off, shrapnel wounds, burns, gruesome fractures, and perforated eardrums from the shock wave of two explosions near the ­Boston Marathon finish line shortly before 3 p.m.

“For many, many people in emergency medicine who are practicing domestically and not in the military, these are once-in-a-lifetime events,” said Dr. Ron Walls, chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Runners and spectators alike were rushed to hospitals, where doctors said that the ­injuries individually were not extraordinary, but that the volume was unprecedented.

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