About of August 31, 1997 we all know. The tragic accident in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris, the Mercedes – with on board Lady Diana, Dodi al Fayed, driver Henri Paul and bodyguard Travor Rees – who goes off the road and crashes. The disappearance of the princess, the beloved mother of William and Harry.
To relive that tragic night is now, for the first time, one of the doctors who tried to save Diana Spencer. His name is MonSef Dahman and today he works as a surgeon on the French Riviera in Antibes.
Today he mainly deals with the treatment of obesity, but there is – in fact – a night he will never forget. “The thought of having lost an important person, who you care about personally, marks you throughout your life,” he says. At dawn on August 31, 1997, he was on duty – a 32-year-old young surgeon – in the largest hospital in France.
Dahman has agreed to relive those tragic hours only now, 24 years later, in an exclusive interview for a new podcast of the Daily Mail. The reason? To reiterate once again, against some conspiracy theories against the princess, that the emergency personnel that night went out of their way to to save Diana. It all began, he explains, when he was called to the emergency room at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris to assist a “young woman” who had been in an accident. It was late August and he was in Paris, and not on vacation like so many other colleagues, just because his wife was about to make him a father for the second time. His shift that weekend began at 8am on Saturday, and he was still on duty at 2am the next morning.
The Mercedes in which Diana was traveling went off the road around midnight and a half. And, due to the severity of her injuries, Diana received extensive care from the doctors on the spot. At the hospital, after a cardiac arrest and an attempt to revive her, he arrived at 2.06 in the morning. “I was resting in the operating room when I received a call from the anesthetist on duty,” he explained to Daily Mail, “He told me to go to the emergency room. I was not told the patient was Lady Diana, but [solo] that there had been a serious accident involving a young woman. ‘ And again: «The organization of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital was very hierarchical. So when such a call came, it meant the case was particularly serious. I arrived quickly and then I understood the true gravity of things ».
At that point Dahman was informed of the woman’s identity: «It only took a moment to understand the reason for all that frenzy. For any surgeon, it is very important to try to save a young woman in those conditions. But surely she is even more so if she is a princess loved all over the world».
According to what was reconstructed by the official documents, Diana on arrival at the hospital presented “very serious internal bleeding in the chest”. A new cardiac arrest occurred around 2.15am. At that point, surgery could no longer be postponed. During that emergency operation Dahman noticed that Diana “had suffered a significant tear in her pericardium,” the membrane that protects her heart. “It took a miracle,” continues the doctor. At that point the emergency room also arrived Professor Alain Pavie, perhaps the best French heart surgeon. He had been thrown out of bed. If anyone could save her, that someone was him.
Pavie decided that Diana needed to be operated on again, and during that new surgery the surgeon realized that the most serious injury was in the pulmonary vein. Pavie sutured the lesion, but unfortunately not even this was enough. The princess’s heart had stopped beating. “We tried to revive her in all possible ways, but it didn’t workHe explained again Dahman. For over an hour: «AWe fought hard, we tried very, very hard. Frankly, when you work in those conditions, you don’t notice the passage of time. The only important thing is that we did everything we could for that young woman. ‘
And again: «We have brought to Pitié-Salpêtrière people in very bad condition, more serious than Diana was when she arrived. It is one of the best centers in France for this type of traumatic emergency. And we saved some of those people, which made us particularly happy and proud. But that time it didn’t happen. We couldn’t save her. And this struck us a lot ».
All 4 in the morning the team, led by Pavie, declared the death of Diana Spencer. Dahman still does not find peace today if he thinks back to that night: «When I left the hospital I was exhausted. I called my primary to tell him what had happened. I was too tired to pay attention to the people who were starting to arrive at the hospital, including President Chirac ». In the following days, then, the surgeon remembers the crowd and the siege of journalists: “We’ve seen people dressing up as doctors, pushing carts, trying to get information. There was a lot of pressure on our safety. ‘
The disappearance of Princess Diana, of course, left a profound emptiness even in Dahman: «The thought of having lost an important person you cared about, marks you throughout your life. When she is a princess and you follow her funeral along with billions of other people, and you tried to save her, that obviously marks you. It marks you for life. Because it is so terrible that this beautiful person has had such a tragic end. Every year in August I think about it. It was the year in which my son would be born and, of course, I think about every anniversary ».
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