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Doc gives first-ever account of battle to save Diana

The only thing that is important is that we do everything possible for this young woman, Dr Dahman said

SNS | London | June 20, 2021 11:14 am

Doc gives first-ever account of battle to save Diana

Princess Diana.

A young doctor was rushed in to save a “young woman” who turned out to be Princess Diana and ever since he has been filled with contrition for failing to get her heart beating again.

MonSef Dahman a young duty general surgeon at the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris was called to the accident and emergency department to treat a “young woman” in the early hours of 31 August 1997.

He was resting in the duty room when he got a call from Bruno Riou, the senior duty anesthetist, telling me to go to the emergency room, Dr Dahman, 56, recalled.

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The case was “particularly serious”, Dr Dahman’s premonition said, since he got the call from a high-level colleague although he wasn’t told it was Lady Diana. The pinch of information was that there had been a serious accident.

Dr Dahman, who was 33 at the time of the incident, arrived moments later at A&E and saw Prof Riou was in the room and personally taking care of the woman on the stretcher, an indication of “special importance”.

He was then informed that the woman was Diana, Princess of Wales.

“It only took that moment for all this unusual activity to become clear to me,” he recalled.

He declined to describe the details of Diana’s treatment, but he said an X-ray revealed she was suffering “very serious internal bleeding”, and underwent a procedure to help remove excess fluid from her chest cavity as well as blood transfusions.
Diana, 36, suffered a cardiac arrest at about 2.15 am and was given external heart massage and emergency surgery while lying on the stretcher in A&E.
The procedure was done by Dr Dahman to enable her breathing but, he explained, that her heart couldn’t function properly because it was lacking blood.
The surgery revealed that Diana had suffered a significant tear in her pericardium which protects the heart.
Prof Alain Pavie, one of France’s leading hear surgeons, arrived and Diana was moved to an operating theatre.
Into the surgery, it was found that the princess had a tear in her upper left pulmonary vein at the point of contact with the heart.
Prof Pavie sutured the lesion, but Diana’s heart had stopped before the surgical exploration and would not restart.
“We tried electric shocks, several times,” said Dr Dahman.
Prof Riou had administered adrenaline but the heart couldn’t be brought to life.
The treating team continued to try to resuscitate Diana for an hour.
“We fought hard, we tried a lot, really an awful lot,” Dr Dahman said.
“The only thing that is important is that we do everything possible for this young woman.”
He said not being able to save Diana affected him “very much”.
Dr Dahman said one of the reasons for speaking out now was to reiterate how the French emergency medical staff had made every possible effort to save Diana, in contrast to enduring conspiracy theories about her death.

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