Bilderberg.org

[TonyGosling]

DIANA'S LIFE COULD HAVE BEEN SAVED SAYS DOCTOR
Monday June 18,2007
By Martin Evans
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/10321/Diana's+life+could+have+been+saved+says+doctor

PRINCESS Diana’s life could have been saved if French doctors had acted differently after her Paris crash, a close friend claims.

Dr James Colthurst, 50, an independent medical practitioner, believes delays in getting her to hospital played a crucial part in her death.

As the 10th anniversary of the tragedy approaches there has been an increased focus on the events of August 31, 1997.

Dr Colthurst, who has more than 25 years medical experience, has questioned whether the French medical team could have done more to save the Princess. “My belief is that had Diana been moved more quickly, the surgeons may have had a better chance,” he said. “Her injuries of course were very serious, but there were delays in addressing those injuries that, to my mind, could have been critical.”

His argument is backed up by a number of world-leading trauma doctors, who also believe more could have been done.

Because of her injuries, it took the paramedics and doctors more than one and a half hours to move Diana to hospital. In­stead of racing straight there, doctors attempted to administer initial first aid at the roadside.

But Dr Colthurst is one of a number of experts who believe this was the wrong approach and immediate surgery may have given her a better chance of survival.

It is this delay which some accident and emergency experts believe could have rendered the fight to save her impossible.

Dr John Ochsner, a former president of the International Society for Cardiovascular Surgery, said: “Given that she was still alive after nearly two hours, had they got her there in an hour they could have saved her.”

That view has been supported by Dr David Wasserman, an American physician with nine years experience in one of the US’s biggest urban hospitals.

He said: “If they had got her to the operating room sooner, she would have had a far greater chance.”

In the US it is medical policy to remove a victim to a hospital at the earliest opportunity.

Dr Stephen Ramee, a leading cardiologist at the Ochsner Health System centre in New Orleans said this offered a better chance of survival.

He said: “We believe that you have a ‘golden hour’ to save someone’s life, whether it’s a traumatic injury or a heart attack. As soon as you get to the casualty, you stabilise them, then you move them as fast as possible, often by helicopter, to a centre where you can perform surgery. Some people call it ‘scoop and run’.”

Dr Ramee said the method was perfected in the Korean and Vietnam wars and research has shown that it saves lives.

He added: “It’s a different philosophy from France. I’m not going to say if it’s right or wrong but John Ochsner and I talked about Princess Diana’s crash and we disagreed with that philosophy. We feel that the best way is to get them to a major trauma centre as soon as possible, if she had had that done, most of us think she probably would have lived,” he said.

Dr Colthurst, who was educated at Eton, met the Princess on a skiing holiday when she was 17, and the pair struck up a friendship.

They remained friends after she married the Prince of Wales and it was he who passed secret tapes from the Princess to author Andrew Moreton. They formed the basis of his explosive book Diana: Her True Story.

He has stressed that he attaches no blame to any of the physicians who treated the Princess, but believes the overall approach was wrong. Shortly after midnight on August 31 1997, Diana left the Ritz Hotel in Paris with companion Dodi Fayed in a Mercedes driven by French security man Henri Paul.

At 12.20am, the car crashed into the 13th pillar of the Alma tunnel, killing the driver and Dodi. Diana was badly injured but was still conscious when the first doctor – a physician passing in his car – arrived on the scene.

An ambulance arrived on the scene within seven minutes and the highly-qualified medical team began work.

She suffered her first cardiac arrest as she was being removed from the mangled Mercedes and doctors performed an external chest massage in order to re-establish a cardiac rhythm.

Eventually she was placed in the ambulance, but according to French procedure the vehicle drove extremely slowly in order to avoid jolting the patient. At one point the ambulance stopped to allow the team to administer adrenaline after a second cardiac arrest.

In all, the journey to the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital less than four miles away took 40 minutes, which meant that Diana did not arrive until one hour and 40 minutes after the accident.

Dr Gareth Davies, a consultant in emergency medicine and pre-hospital care, for the Barts and London NHS Trust, said the European model of treating the victim at the scene of the accident had a higher success rate.

“We believe that patients should have their care tailored to their needs and the system of having paramedic and physician offering pre-hospital care at the scene has proved very successful in saving lives,” he added.