MonSef Dahman works as a surgeon in the French Riviera town of Antibes, that ‘billionaires’ playground’ which once charmed Picasso and F. Scott Fitzgerald and still attracts the Hollywood elite.
One of his specialities is treating the obese. Life is good there, his career fulfilling.
But there are particular times of year — the last day of August and then again on his son’s birthday in November — when his thoughts darken; when they invariably return to an event which not only had a profound ‘impact’ on him personally but shocked the entire world.
‘The thought that you have lost an important person, for whom you cared personally, marks you for life,’ he says.
That is because for several hours in the early morning of Sunday, August 31, 1997, Dahman, the then young duty general surgeon in the biggest hospital in France, played a central role in the desperate fight to save the life of Diana, Princess of Wales. She had been critically injured in a car crash in the centre of Paris earlier that night.
In an exclusive interview, surgeon MonSef Dahman (pictured) has recalled how he was summoned to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris to attend to Diana, Princess of Wales
He has never spoken to a newspaper about this episode until now. But in an exclusive interview for this investigative series and forthcoming seven-part Mail+ podcast, he has recalled in dramatic and moving detail how he was summoned to the emergency department of the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris to attend to a ‘young woman’ who turned out to be the most famous in the world.
Dahman, 56, also recalled a chilling story of his own experience of the perverse iconography and unscrupulous monetising of the Princess, even after her death.
One of his reasons for speaking now — he received no payment — was to reiterate how, in contradiction to the conspiracy theories which claimed they were somehow part of a murderous plot by the British Establishment, the French emergency medical staff involved that night made every conceivable effort to save Diana.
To suggest otherwise — as had been done by Mohamed Al Fayed and several lurid foreign magazines, among others — caused both bemusement and hurt.
A Parisian by birth, Dahman would not have been in his home city, let alone on duty, that night were he not about to become a father for second time.
Every August the French capital empties of those citizens who can afford to spend a month in the country or by the sea. If it were not for foreign tourists, the City of Light would be a ghost town.
‘But I didn’t take a vacation that summer,’ he recalls to the Mail. ‘For the extremely simple reason that my wife was pregnant with my son (they already had a daughter). As a result, I worked all summer.’
And work he did — long, long hours like the junior doctors and surgeons in our own NHS. His shift that weekend had started at 8am on Saturday.
He was still on duty at 2am the following morning, ‘though of course it was not continuous activity. I did have moments of rest. In fact, if I remember correctly, it was a pretty easy day. I didn’t have to deal with anything too difficult.’
That would change — dramatically. The Mercedes in which Diana was travelling crashed in the Alma tunnel at approximately 12.23am. Owing to the severity of her resulting injuries, she received lengthy treatment by doctors at the scene.
She then suffered a cardiac arrest while being moved to an ambulance. After being revived, she was transported by that ambulance to Dahman’s hospital. She arrived there at 2.06am.
‘I was resting in the duty room when I got a call from Bruno Riou, the senior duty anaesthetist, telling me to go to the emergency room,’ Dahman recalls. ‘I wasn’t told it was Lady Diana, but [only] that there’d been a serious accident involving a young woman.
On August 31, 1997, Dahman played a central role in the desperate fight to save the life of Diana, who had been critically injured in a car crash in the centre of Paris (pictured)
‘The organisation of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital was very hierarchical. So when you got a call from [such] a high-level colleague that meant the case was particularly serious.’ His rest room was only 50 metres from the accident and emergency department ‘And so I got there fairly quickly. And then I realised the true seriousness of things.’
He recalls: ‘My intern [his junior assistant] was in the room. But she was in a corner because she was a little overwhelmed by the gravity of the moment.’ Riou was also present.
‘That too was a sign of the special importance. And he was personally taking care of a lady who was lying on a stretcher, with a lot going on around her.’
Dahman, 33 at the time, was then informed that the unconscious figure on the stretcher was no less than Diana, Princess of Wales.
‘It only took that moment for all this unusual activity to become clear to me,’ he recalls with some understatement. ‘For any doctor, any surgeon, it is of very great importance to be faced with such a young woman who is in this condition. But of course even more so if she is a princess.’
He was unwilling to describe certain aspects of the treatment she received at his hands, for reasons of patient confidentiality. The Mail has also chosen to excise certain details presented to the official inquiries into her death, but it is important to make clear how hard the team fought to save her life, and how desperate the circumstances.
Diana had been X-rayed on arrival at hospital. The resulting images of her chest showed she was suffering ‘very serious internal bleeding’. As a result, she underwent a thoracic drain — excess fluid being removed from her chest cavity.
But haemorrhaging persisted and Diana was receiving transfusions of O-negative blood held in the emergency room, as her blood group had not yet been established
At around 2.15am she suffered another cardiac arrest. The situation had grown more critical. More extreme intervention was needed.
As she underwent external heart massage, Riou asked Dahman to perform a surgical procedure. He was to do so while Diana was still lying on the stretcher in the emergency room.
This circumstance was ‘truly exceptional’ and an indication of how parlous her situation had become. ‘I did this (procedure) to enable her to breathe,’ Dahman explains. ‘Her heart couldn’t function properly because it was lacking in blood.’
As a result of this intervention, Dahman discovered that Diana had suffered a significant tear in her pericardium, which protects the heart.
The prognosis worsened. It was now 2.30am. A miracle was needed. Dahman and Riou were joined in the emergency room by Professor Alain Pavie, perhaps France’s top heart surgeon. He had been summoned from his bed at home. If anyone could save her, it was him.