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“We fought hard, we tried hard, really, really hard.” So remembers the surgeon MonSef Dahman early in the morning of August 31, 1997 when, despite all efforts, he could not save Lady Di. It’s the first time for the doctor to talk about what happened in the emergency room.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily mail, Dahman set out to banish conspiracy theories that have always surrounded the death of the Princess of Wales and justify the work of doctors of the Paris hospital, who did everything to avoid the tragic end.
The memory of the fatal night
Like every August, the French capital was almost empty. A large part of its inhabitants enjoyed a well-deserved rest at sea – or in other destinations -. “I didn’t take a vacation that summer just because my wife was pregnant. of my son (they already had a daughter). So, I worked all summer, ”he said about his service presence at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital.
The night of the accident Dahman -who was 33 at the time- I know I was on call. His shift had started at 8 a.m., the day had been fairly calm, and he was resting in the ward of the hospital when he was informed of the admission to the emergency room “A young woman.”
The remains of the Mercedes in which Lady Di and Dodi al Fayed circulated at dawn on August 31, 1997 in the streets of Paris. Photo: EFE
The Mercedes Benz Diana was traveling in with Dodi Al Fayed crashed in the soul tunnel around 12:23 am. However, she did not arrive at the hospital until 2:06 am, as paramedics tried to stabilize her at the scene of the accident. On the way, he went into cardiac arrest.
“I was resting in the laundry room when I got a call from Bruno Riou, the main anesthetist on call, telling me to go to the emergency room. They didn’t tell me it was Lady Diana, but that there had been a serious accident involving a young woman, ”said the doctor during the interview.
And he revealed: “The organization of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital was very hierarchical. So when you got a call from a high level colleague, it meant that the case was particularly serious“.
Arrived at the emergency room, she found her intern in a corner, completely overwhelmed by the gravity of the moment. It was then that they told him that the person who he was unconscious on the stretcher It was Diana, the Princess of Wales.
“For any doctor, any surgeon, it is of great importance to deal with such a young woman who is in this condition. But, of course, even more if it’s a princess“he told the Daily mail.
The princess entering the Ritz hotel alone to dine with Dodi Al-Fayed. A few hours later he would die.
When she arrived at the hospital, Lady Di had had an x-ray. The pictures showed that his chest was suffering from a “A very serious internal bleeding”. Therefore, the first thing they did was a chest tube: extracting excess fluid from the chest cavity.
Emergency surgery, despair and the sad end
But bleeding persisted. Diana was receiving blood transfusions Or negative in the emergency room, since they still did not know what his blood type was. Around 2:15 a.m., he suffered another cardiac arrest. The situation had become more critical. More extreme intervention was needed.
She was subjected to an external cardiac massage and, still on the emergency stretcher, they decided to perform the surgery. “It was really exceptional. I did this procedure to allow him to breathe. His heart could not function properly because it lacked blood,” recalls the doctor.
The security camera shows Diana leaving the hotel after dinner.
As a result, Dahman discovered that the princess had suffered a large tear in your pericardium, the membrane that protects the heart. It was 2:30 am. The prognosis worsened. At this point, only a miracle would save her.
So the professor was summoned to the emergency room Alain Pavie, the best cardiac surgeon in France. They literally got him out of bed. And all hopes were on him. If anyone could save her, it was him.
Pavie decided that Diana should be transferred to an operating room. He suspected that the main source of his internal bleeding had not yet been found. So that was it. Further surgical exploration was necessary to discover the most serious injury: a tear in the left upper pulmonary vein, in the point of contact with the heart. Pavie sutured the wound.
But Diana’s heart had stopped before the surgical exploration and was not starting again.
They were losing the battle. “We tried electrical shock, several times and, as he had done in the emergency room, a cardiac massage. Professor Riou had given him adrenaline. But we couldn’t make her heart beat againDahman detailed.
Diana turns to the car. By his side, Dodi Al-Fayed. It was the last time she was seen alive.
The team continued these efforts to resuscitation for a full hour. It was in vain.
“We fight hardWe tried really, really, really hard. Frankly, when you work in these conditions, you don’t notice the passing of time, ”the doctor said almost 24 years later. “The only thing that matters is that we’ve done everything we can for this young woman.”
At first, he admitted, he had had hope. “People arrived at Pitié-Salpêtrière who were in a very bad state, more serious than Diana when she arrived. It is one of the best centers in France for this type of traumatic emergency. Yes we saved some of these people, which made us particularly happy and proud, ”he said.
Prince Charles, Diana’s ex-husband, along with the couple’s children, William and Harry, at the massive funeral.
But this time it was not possible. AT 4 a.m., the team, led by Pavie, accepted that nothing more could be done to revive the patient. It was a “collegial decision,” Dahman recalled. All resuscitation efforts have ceased. The extraordinary life of Diana, Princess of Wales, had come to an end.
Bloody shoes
Exhausted and dejected – “It’s always a big disappointment to see a young person leave us” – he left the operating room, called his boss to tell him what had happened and to prepare him for the chaos that was likely to come arrive, then returned to the break room.
Lady Di and Dodi al Fayed, his last partner and also deceased in the accident, were walking along the French bank. Photo: AP
He was too tired and depressed to pay attention to French officials, including the president Jacques Chirac, who started arriving at the hospital early that morning to pay their respects to Diana.
In the days following the princess’s death, the doctor witnessed events as unpleasant as they were shameful. Some media tried to infiltrate the rooms and corridors of the hospital get closer to those who had cared for Diana.
An episode he had never spoken of before was etched in his mind. “When I was treating Diana, I wore my white clogs. And obviously, in this situation, you don’t care about anything other than trying to save the patient. It wasn’t until the next morning that I noticed my the hooves were stained with his blood», He recalled.
“The hospital is very big and I was walking between the buildings, when a Frenchman approached me and said: ‘Ah, your clogs, they interest me. I want to buy them. There is blue blood in them”. Horrified, the surgeon refused and immediately cleaned the clogs he had worn that night.
Memory and the present
Currently, MonSef Dahman works as a surgeon in the city of Antibes, in the French Riviera, this “billionaire’s playground” which once charmed Pablo Picasso and Scott Fitzgerald and still attracts the Hollywood elite.
Life is good there and his career is satisfying. But the specialist admits he still feels emotionally affected by what he’s been through. “The idea that you have lost an important person, to whom you personally cared, marks you for life,” he said.
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