During almost two decades as a doctor in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, Dr Richard Nicholas, has encountered the after-effects of countless violent outrages - including the man who suffered "a Black 'n' Decker".
In a rare form of paramilitary style "punishment" attack, this patient recounted to hospital staff how the tool was produced after the loyalist gunman's weapon jammed.
The gang held him down while the power drill was driven through his lower thighs. Surprisingly, the victim suffered only soft tissue injuries and recovered well.
"Those who suffer flesh wounds are the lucky ones," according to Dr Nicholas, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon. The complicated injuries involve bone, vascular and nerve damage, alone or in combination. This increases theatre time, hospital stay and decreases chances of a full recovery.
"If it is just a muscle and skin wound then that's a relatively minor surgical event. However, it has to be treated appropriately with antibiotics and closure as a delayed procedure 4872 hours later to prevent deep infection.
"But bullets can also fracture a bone, blow away a blood vessel and damage irreparably a nerve."
If the nerve is hit, the victim may suffer permanent paralysis. "You can, as a delayed procedure, put a cable graft across, but then a nerve grows at a very slow rate, one millimetre a day. So you would have to grow a nerve for an extensive distance over a period of months to years to be able to get any function back," Dr Nicholas says.
If a major blood vessel is damaged, circulation can be affected, which in worst cases leads to amputation. In theatre, an orthopaedic surgeon stabilises the fracture, often with metal rods before a vascular surgeon performs delicate surgery on the blood vessels.
Low-velocity handgun injuries to the legs are described using the term "knee-cappings". However, he says this is a misnomer and knee injuries account for only 1 per cent of "punishment" cases. The thigh is the most common target for masked gunmen.
In the late 1980s, medics also noted increased prevalence of ankle and elbow gunshot wounds - some victims are shot up to six times.
High-velocity weapons are seldom used in the attacks but are used to kill, he says. "But if they are used on limbs it is horrendous. It makes my job five times or 10 times harder in those situations. It's a much bigger injury and more difficult to deal with."
Beatings with sticks embedded with nails or the dropping of breeze blocks (large blocks used in building construction) on hands and feet can also cause devastating injuries. He also recalls the case of a young man nailed to floorboards before he was beaten with baseball bats.
Open injuries to the shins are a common result with victims beaten so hard the skin splits and bones are exposed. Complications with these injuries can include a deep vein thrombosis.
"The crush nature of them is very difficult to treat. You can end up having limb-threatening injuries with the dangers of infection and the skin becoming necrotic," Dr Nicholas says.
He admits he does not now ask victims what was their alleged crime in the community that attracted the attention of the paramilitaries.
"I did at the start, but it was a complete wasted journey because the information that you got was unreliable. You just have to keep a professional distance."
Anxiety, depression, phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder can be experienced by victims of attacks, particularly those left physically disabled, according to consultant psychiatrist at Lagan Valley hospital, Dr Oscar Daly.
Men abducted without warning were likely to be more affected than a victim who had been given an "appointment" with the paramilitaries. "People are told `Come up to the alleyway at 10 o'clock tonight, you're going to get your knees done.' So they know this is going to happen and nothing more. If a guy is just suddenly picked up and taken away he thinks he might be murdered - that is going to be more traumatic for him."
Dr Daly encounters victims from the mainly loyalist Lisburn area and the republican areas of Twinbrook and Poleglass in west Belfast. His patients are aged between 18 and 25. A "talking treatment" with antidepressants prescribed is used and social intervention, working with the family or a partner, can also be included.
DR DALY stresses one of the main difficulties with treating post-traumatic problems of victims of attacks is that they illustrate avoidance behaviour. "I think the same applies to the physical condition - as soon as they can get up on their crutches they tend to leave the ward. So they are very hard to engage in treatment. They don't want to be stigmatised," he adds.
Many of those experiencing phobias are even afraid to come out of their homes. "In fact these guys are even more isolated because they don't get the support of their neighbours like someone involved in a different type of incident."
Young victims often come from broken families without a father figure or rules to provide structure. Many have "personality problems" which have led them to become involved in antisocial behaviour, Dr Daly says.
"But people with personality problems, by and large, will find it more difficult to deal with traumatic incidents because the personality difficulties make them more vulnerable anyway.
"To compound this, these guys will have been traumatised by the attack, leaving them even more vulnerable to further trauma in their lives," he adds.