Princess Diana's tragic death at age 36 on August 31, 1997 has stayed fresh in many people's minds,
even after all these years.
Many investigations have been launched into the events of that night and the final moments
of the storied royal's life.
According to the BBC, Princess Diana was fatally injured in a Paris car crash while trying
to flee a horde of paparazzi chasing them into a tunnel.
The driver and Diana's companion, Egyptian film producer Dodi Al Fayed, died at the scene of the accident.
Diana, however, was still alive, and French authorities cut her from the automobile wreckage.
After that, she was rushed to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, where she ultimately died.
In the years following Diana's death, conspiracy theories were circulated by many people, including
Al Fayed's father, Mohamed.
"They been murdered.
Dodi and Diana been murdered.
Definitely."
MonSef Dahman was the medical doctor who attended to Diana when she arrived at the hospital.
According to one theory, Dahman and his colleagues were tied to an alleged British plot to kill
the People's Princess.
These claims, of course, have never been proven.
In his first interview since that fateful night, Dahman spoke with the Daily Mail on
June 18, 2021 and revealed what happened to Diana in his care, finally setting the record
straight about Princess Diana's last moments alive.
Dahman recalled that Diana arrived at the hospital around 2 a.m. on August 31, 1997.
At the scene of the accident, paramedics worked hard to stabilize the princess after a cardiac arrest.
But, once she made it to the hospital, she underwent x-rays, which revealed that Diana
had, quote, "very serious internal bleeding."
Dahman and the other doctors tried to relieve the bleeding and hemorrhaging with several
procedures, including a surgical one performed by Dahman himself.
He told the Daily Mail,
"I did this [procedure] to enable her to breathe.
Her heart couldn't function properly because it was lacking in blood."
In the midst of the procedure, Dahman realized that Diana's pericardium was torn.
This is the membrane that protects the heart.
It was then Dahman realized the princess was in much worse shape than he originally thought.
At 2:30 a.m., Dahmun and his medical colleagues called on France's top heart surgeon, Professor
Alain Pavie, to take over.
Pavie took Diana to an operating room, where he and the other doctors finally uncovered
the source of her profuse bleeding.
Her upper-left pulmonary vein was torn.
Essentially, she had what The Independent described as "a hole torn in her heart."
Dahman recalled to the Daily Mail that Pavie sewed the tear together, but it was too late
— Diana's heart had stopped.
The doctors struggled to restart the princess' heart for a full hour until they stopped resuscitation
efforts at 4 a.m.
In his interview, Dahman said,
"We tried electric shocks, several times, but we could not get her heart beating again.
We fought hard, we tried a lot, really an awful lot.
We could not save her.
And that affected us very much."
The doctors took extraordinary measures to help save Diana.
Yet despite all their efforts, they still came under police scrutiny.
In the 2000s, the medical personnel's efforts to save Diana were investigated during Operation
Paget, led by former Metropolitan Police Chief Lord John Stevens.
After interviewing a renowned British forensic pathologist about the events on the night
Diana died, Stevens concluded,
"Those involved in the emergency treatment and surgery were highly qualified and experienced
in their field.
Their evidence showed that every effort was made to save the life of the Princess of Wales.
No other strategy would have affected the outcome."
However, the tragedy of Diana's death and subsequent investigation caused Dahman, and
his colleagues, to feel tremendous guilt for not being able to save the iconic royal figure.
Dahman said,
"When it's a princess and you follow her funeral along with billions of other people, and you
had tried to save her, that obviously marks you.
Because, it's so terrible that this beautiful person had such a tragic end."