More medical emergencies for Channel 4

London’s network of frontline trauma hospitals treats critically injured patients across the capital, as covered in this ground-breaking series.

The London Major Trauma System is a world-first system of hospitals, air ambulances and paramedics that has improved survival rates for major trauma patients by 50%. Emergency is a present-tense medical documentary series – following the minute-by-minute decisions that trauma teams make to treat the most serious cases: from life-saving interventions at the roadside to A&E critical care, and from cutting-edge surgery to painstaking rehabilitation.

In this episode, the first of the series, the air ambulance, paramedics and fire crews are dispatched to 49-year-old pedestrian Paiwand, who’s trapped under a lorry in south London. It’s a race against time to treat his crush injuries.

But first, fire crews must lift the 29-tonne HGV to get Paiwand out. Alicia, who’s 13, has crashed an electric scooter into a lamppost and has a large gaping wound on the back of her upper leg. And after falling at home and breaking his femur, 84-year-old Ralph is at St Mary’s facing complex surgery with his chances of survival only 50-50.

EMERGENCY, Channel 4, 9pm.

(Series two, episode one).