THE young survivors of the Dunblane school massacre are likely to bear up to their injuries better than the adults, according to experts.
Children are more resilient than adults when faced with the sort of severe trauma caused by gunshot wounds.
When the body sustains a serious injury involving heavy loss of blood it goes into shock, which can be fatal depending on the strength of the individual.
Mr Mark Davenport, consultant paediatric surgeon at King's College Hospital, London, said children are better equipped to withstand such injuries because they have a "bigger reserve" than adults. "If you have some kind of trauma, whatever it may be, a stabbing or a gunshot to the chest, the body responds in several ways".
"Loss of blood causes the cardiovascular system to contract the blood vessels to concentrate the blood you've got in the vital organs, the heart, brain and lungs, at the expense of other areas.
"Children can cope with this better because they have no heart disease, no furring of the arteries. They're not suffering from the ravages of time.
"For the same reason they always recover faster than adults. In the case of serious abdominal surgery, a child might be up and about in two or three days whereas an adult will take a week."
He said the first job for the surgical team treating the children would have been to restore their lost blood.
Then an assessment would have to be made of what parts of the body the bullet bad passed through. Bullets often take unexpected routes, turning and changing course in the body.
Thankfully Thomas Hamilton had used low velocity handguns and not a high powered rifle of the sort Michael Ryan used in Hungerford.
Meanwhile, four Irish grandparents were yesterday relieved that their four grandchildren had survived the massacre.
Andrew O'Donnell (6), whose grandparents come from Buncrana, Co Donegal, sustained gunshot wounds to the leg and arms in the shootings and was yesterday making good progress in hospital.
His grandparents were too distressed to talk about his ordeal.
Mr Raymond Doherty, originally from Derry, and his wife Nora, originally from Limavady, Co Derry, who is a school governor in Dunblane, have three daughters at the school. They moved to the quiet Scottish town from London seven years ago. Both had studied psychiatric nursing in Derry.
Mr Doherty's father, Mr Maurice Doherty, who works as a school "lollipop man" in Derry, said he and his wife Florence had to wait several hours before they received the news that their three granddaughters were uninjured.
"Mary, aged six, witnessed some of the killings," said Mr Doherty.