Diana 'tore at drip' at crash scene
Diana, Princess of Wales was so agitated as doctors treated her in the wreck of her car that she tore out a drip they tried to insert, her inquest heard today.
Medics had to restrain and sedate the Princess, who was shouting and thrashing her arm around, before they could get her out of the mangled vehicle.
Dr Jean-Marc Martino, an emergency specialist, recalled Diana “shouting and saying things in English which were comprehensible yet incoherent”, the court was told.
The inquest also heard that the nature of the extremely rare injuries she suffered suggested Diana’s heart had been thrown forward violently inside her chest during the crash.
The court was told that there are no recorded cases of patients with the same injuries arriving at hospital alive.
Dr Martino, of France’s Service d’Aide Medicale d’Urgence (Samu), oversaw the Princess’s treatment from shortly after the crash, which happened just before 0.25am on August 31 1997, to her arrival at the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital at 2.06am.
It was half an hour from the arrival of the first emergency services at the scene in the Pont de l’Alma Tunnel in Paris to Diana’s removal from the wreckage.
Professor Andre Lienhart, who later investigated all aspects of her treatment for a French investigating magistrate, told the inquest today of Dr Martino’s account.
He said an assistant had to hold the Princess’s arm by force to get a drip in but she quickly pulled it out.
“That’s true,” he said. “Due to the agitation, the first line, the first drip was removed.”
Speaking by video link from Paris, he added: “She was agitated, she refused treatment ... he decided to inject some drugs to reduce the agitation, for her to accept treatment.”
The court has heard that the Princess suffered massive internal bleeding as a result of tears to a key blood vessel attached to her heart – the superior left pulmonary vein – as well as the pericardium, the casing of the heart.
Prof Lienhart said he concluded that the Princess, who was not wearing a seatbelt, might have been sitting sideways when the car crashed into a pillar in the tunnel.
“There was a very strong and brutal rotational movement,” he told the jury.
Nicholas Hilliard, counsel to the inquest, asked him: “In other words, that on impact the heart had been projected very violently to her right hand side?”
The professor replied: “Yes, that’s true.”
