Surgeon: Diana Was "Recoverable" after Crash

Ten years after the fact, the search for answers regarding the death of Princess Diana continues.

Unfortunately, the latest batch of questions has turned up a sad case of shoulda, coulda, woulda.

After reviewing records of the treatment administered to Diana, a top British surgeon testified Monday during an inquest in London that the former Princess of Wales might have survived the 1997 car crash that killed her if French medics had transported her to the hospital faster.

While cardio-thoracic specialist Thomas Treasure opined that the medics did well to stabilize the 36-year-old divorcée and keep her alive while en route to Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital, he also said that he felt "opportunities were lost."

"They had done a lot of good in that first half an hour, but the next big amount of good that could have been done required a surgeon," Treasure said, making note of the ambulance crew's decision to drive slowly and stop short of the hospital. Once she was in the ambulance, time began "slipping away."

The accident occurred at approximately 12:25 a.m. on the night of Aug. 31, 1997. The ambulance did not arrive at Pitie-Salpetriere until 2:06 a.m. It took approximately half an hour to remove Diana from the vehicle, which had smashed into a pillar in Paris' Pont de l'Alma tunnel.

According to medical reports, Diana had been sitting sideways without a seatbelt in the backseat of her chauffeured Mercedes sedan, and the massive jolt caused tears in the superior left pulmonary vein of her heart, as well as in the pericardium, or, heart casing, causing a severe internal hemorrhage.

"Whether, within a minute of the hospital, you would put your foot on the accelerator or on the brake is open to some debate," Treasure testified. He also questioned the "extraordinary" amount of adrenaline that was administered to Diana, as well as the hospital surgeon's decision to open her chest from the front rather than from the side, which might have allowed him to detect the source of the bleeding faster.

Dr. Alain Pavie, one of France's top cardio-thoracic surgeons, was summoned from home to help the recovery efforts, which were called off at 4 a.m.

"When I pick through this with the benefit of hindsight [and ask] 'Was this recoverable?' the answer is 'Yes, it just about was,'" Treasure said.

Doctors who treated Diana defended the crew's actions, saying that she surely would have been dead on arrival if they hadn't worked so hard to keep her stable at the scene, at one point reviving her from cardiac arrest.

Diana was "shouting and saying things in English which were comprehensible yet incoherent," testified emergency specialist Dr. Jean-Marc Martino, who oversaw her treatment from his arrival at the crash scene until her arrival at the hospital.

She was so agitated following the crash that she tore out an intravenous drip that had been inserted into her arm, added Professor Andre Lienhart, who testified via satellite link from Paris, all the while maintaining that every effort was made to save the princess.

"Due to the agitation, the first line, the first drip was removed," Lienhart said. "She was agitated...she refused treatment. [Martino] decided to inject some drugs to reduce the agitation, for her to accept treatment."

Diana received the best possible treatment and, even in hindsight, there was nothing that should have been done differently, said Lienhart, who previously authored a report about the crash response team as part of an investigation conducted by French officials.

Diana's untimely death not only caused an international outpouring of grief—like the Kennedy assassination, it also prompted a litany of conspiracy theories, most involving Britain's royal family. The current inquest intends to reveal once and for all whether the deaths of Diana and her boyfriend, Harrods heir Dodi Fayed, were really the result of a tragic accident or something more sinister.

Fayed's father, for one, has said that he believes British secret service murdered the couple at the behest of Prince Philip, Diana's former father-in-law and husband of Queen Elizabeth II.

The official version of events is that Diana's chauffeur, Henri Paul, was trying to outrace a pack of motorcycle-borne paparazzi that was pursuing the couple's Mercedes limo through the streets of Paris when he lost control of the car in the tunnel.

Diana and Fayed had just left the Ritz hotel when the shutterbugs took chase. Fayed and Paul, who British and French authorities say was drunk at the time, were pronounced dead at the scene.

The inquest into the exact circumstances that led to their deaths is expected to take up to six months and cost about 10 million pounds, or $20.9 million.

View some of the images that were only released to the public this year in our photo gallery.