Doctor Reveals How He Tried to Save Princess Diana After Her Crash: "Her Heart Couldn't..."

Princess Diana was lovingly referred to as the 'Queen of Hearts' for her philanthropic and charitable works. Unfortunately, she met a tragic end on August 31, 1997, when she was injured in a deadly automobile crash at the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris, France. Years later, one of the surgeons who battled to save her life, MonSef Dahman, described how he did "everything possible" to revive her heartbeat. “I did this procedure to enable her to breathe,” Dr Dahman told the Daily Mail Online. “Her heart couldn’t function properly because it was lacking in blood.”

In the early hours of the morning, the young general surgeon at the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital in Paris was resting in the duty room when he was called to the accident and emergency department to treat a "young woman." “I wasn’t told it was Lady Diana, but [only] that there’d been a serious accident involving a young woman," he shared. He was only informed once he reached the emergency room. He refused to elaborate on the late princess' medical care, but he did confirm that an X-ray showed that she was experiencing "very serious internal bleeding," and that she received blood transfusions and surgery to help drain extra fluid from her chest cavity.

Diana was traveling in a Mercedes when it collided in the Alma tunnel at around 12.23 a.m. Because of the extent of her injuries, she was treated by medics on the spot for a long time. She arrived at the hospital at around 2.06 AM. Dr Dahman further stated that the Princess of Wales went into cardiac arrest at around 2:15 AM, she was placed on a stretcher in A&E and given an external heart massage and emergency surgery. Upon medical procedures, it was discovered that Diana had sustained a large rip in the pericardium, the layer that surrounds the heart. She was taken to an operating room when Professor Alain Pavie, one of France's top heart surgeons, arrived to take hold of the situation.

A tear in the princess's upper left pulmonary vein at the point of contact with the heart was found after additional surgical investigation. Although Prof. Pavie sutured the lesion, the medical team could not revive her heart because it had stopped before their surgical intervention. “We tried electric shocks, several times and, as I had done in the emergency room, cardiac massage,” Dr Dahman said. “Professor Riou had administered adrenaline. But we could not get her heart beating again.” 

The skilled surgeon stated that they were unable to save the princess on time and this affected his mental well-being for a long time. “We fought hard, we tried a lot, really an awful lot," Dr Dahman said. According to The Independent, he further explained that, in contrast to persistent conspiracy theories over the princess's death, one of the motivations for speaking out at this time was to restate how the French emergency medical personnel had done everything to save the 'People's Princess'.