French medical staff have been accused of “squandering” vital time that could have saved Diana, Princess of Wales.<\/p>\n
Professor Thomas Treasure, a leading British surgeon, told the Princess’s inquest that a “window of opportunity” may have existed to get her to hospital half an hour before she was taken there.<\/p>\n
He said that medics had done “very substantial good” in the initial period after the accident but that once Diana was in the ambulance time began “slipping away”. <\/p>\n
Although the combination Diana’s injuries following her high-speed crash in the Pont d’Alma were extremely rare and serious, Prof Treasure said it was theoretically possible that she might have been saved. <\/p>\n
The court heard of a discrepancy between the French approach to multiple-injury patients – which favours treatment at the scene – and the “scoop and run” approach taken in the UK. <\/p>\n
Diana was freed from the wreckage of her Mercedes at 1am on August 31 1997, within 35 minutes of the crash. <\/p>\n
But it was not until 1.40am that she was judged sufficiently stable to be taken to the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital across Paris, having suffered an apparent cardiac arrest. <\/p>\n
The ambulance was also ordered to drive slowly so as not to further destabilise the Princess en route.<\/p>\n
On one occasion, just metres from the hospital, the vehicle had to stop for around five minutes while treatment was administated when Diana’s blood pressure dropped perilously low, the jury heard. <\/p>\n
A series of senior French doctors told the inquest that had Diana not been given such intense treatment on the way she would arrived at the hospital dead. <\/p>\n
Doctors finally gave up the battle at 4am after extensive emergency surgery to stem massive internal bleeding on the right side of her chest. <\/p>\n
But Prof Treasure questioned the treatment given to Diana and the decision to stop so close to the hospital rather than speed up. <\/p>\n
He said: “They had done some very substantial good relatively quickly – stabilising the neck, getting her out of the car with just a brief episode when they lost the pulse, they got things going again and produced a normal blood pressure.” <\/p>\n
“Whether within a minute of hospital you put your foot on the accelerator or put your foot on the brake is also open to debate,” he said. <\/p>\n
Prof Treasure, a former president of the European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery, added: “They had done a lot of good in that first half hour but from there, [but] the next big amount of good that could be done required a surgeon.” <\/p>\n
Counsel to the inquest Nicholas Hilliard asked: “Is it your view that part of that time, the essential period, was squandered?” <\/p>\n
He replied: “It’s a hard word, isn’t it, but I think opportunities were lost.” <\/p>\n
He went on: “At the point at which she was in the ambulance and that initial assessment had been done pretty accurately and the neck was stabilised and the circulation … I’m not quite sure what happened after that, that they didn’t have her in hospital rather sooner.” <\/p>\n
He added: “When I pick through this with the benefit of hindsight (and ask) ‘was this recoverable?’ the answer is ‘Yes, it just about was’.” <\/p>\n
The inquest was adjourned and continues on Tuesday. The inquest into her death has heard that Diana’s ambulance took well over an hour to travel the 6 kilometers to the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital, a delay that probably contributed to her death <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Princess_Diana_What_Really_Happened"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nhttp:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/main.jhtml?xml=\/news\/2007\/11\/19\/ndiana219.xml<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"