SURGEONS have launched a shock campaign aimed at young people to highlight the horrors of facial injuries.

As alarming figures reveal that York District Hospital has a higher than average rate of casualties suffering facial injuries, surgeons say young people in the city need to change their behaviour.

They say alcohol is a catalyst to assaults that can scar people for life, and are calling on publicans in York to introduce special beer glasses that shatter harmlessly on being broken, like a car windscreen.

Their campaign is part of a national one being launched today by the British Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons highlighting the issue.

It is being backed by a York father-of-two, Jason Parker, who is all too familiar with facial surgery after having his features kicked out of shape in a vicious attack.

Jason, 26, suffered a broken jaw and painful swelling after he was jumped by two mystery attackers on his way home from a grocery shop in York two days before New Year's Eve.

Jason's jaw swelled up "the size of an apple" and surgeons had to insert a metal plate in his face, which will never be removed.

Police are baffled by the attack on Jason, of Huntington Road, because there was no apparent motive.

In one week last year, 96 people were admitted to York District Hospital's casualty department with facial injuries - around twice the national average. That works out at about 5,000 cases a year.

A pioneering report by the association, base on a week-long study of oral surgery departments up and down the UK late last year, reveals that nearly a quarter of all facial injuries were linked to alcohol.

Over half of assault victims had drunk alcohol within four hours of the injury. Peter Cove and Don Starr work in the York District Hospital's oral surgery department.

They are responsible for repairing the damage to the faces of young victims of violence like this.

Mr Starr, a senior registrar, said very often it was innocent bystanders, even young women, who were glassed in the face when they were trying to calm down troublemakers.

He said many victims could be disfigured for life, with vicious scars, damaged nerves, smashed noses and even permanent numbness or paralysis in the face.

It could ruin their personal lives, as well as making it harder for them to find a job, he said.

He said: "Putting somebody's face back together can be like a jigsaw puzzle. Like a jigsaw, you think a bit fits there, then find it doesn't and have to go back and do it again.

Next week Mr Starr and Mr Cove will be touring schools in the area with a hard-hitting video describing some of the injuries caused.

Mr Starr called for the licensed trade to accept some responsibility for what's going on. "It is all very well them taking the profits.

They have to take some of the responsibility for the consequences," he said.

Alan Rowley, chairman of the Licensed Victuallers' Association, said the York pub trade would switch to tempered glass "tomorrow" if glass manufacturers did not charge what he described as exorbitant prices for them.

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