Doctors: Diana's injuries impossible to survive
In this story:
Last-ditch attempts not rare
'Not just celebrities'
Victim's age a factor
Pulmonary vein crucial
'Right hospital at the right time'
August 31, 1997 Web posted at: 9:09 p.m. EDT (0109 GMT)
LONDON (CNN) -- Princess Diana's injuries from the Paris car crash were so severe and her blood loss so massive it would have been impossible for her to survive, British doctors said Sunday.
As details emerged about the accident that killed the princess and her millionaire Egyptian companion Dodi Fayed in Paris, medical experts in London heaped praise on their French counterparts and said they had done everything possible to save her life.
"I think one would say they were unsurvivable injuries," said Alaistair Wilson, the director of emergency services at the Royal London Hospital.
"The French ambulance service, the people doing the extrication (from the mangled wreck) and the hospital certainly appear to me to have done extremely well. On the evidence I've got, they get top marks for doing all and a bit more," he added.
Diana, 36, died of cardiac arrest after doctors at Paris' Hospital La Pitie Salpetriere repaired a tear in a ruptured pulmonary vein and massaged her heart for two hours in an effort to get it pumping again.
Last-ditch attempts not rare
Doctors' last-ditch attempts to save Diana, including the lengthy heart massage, are considered extreme but hardly rare, especially for healthy young victims of auto accidents.
When Diana arrived at the hospital, she was bleeding heavily from the chest.
Dr. Bruno Riou, head of the hospital's intensive care unit, said doctors opened her chest and found "an important wound of the left pulmonary vein," which carries blood from the lungs to the heart.
The wound, the apparent source of the bleeding, was closed.
The doctors tried to revive her with the chest massage -- first externally and then directly to the heart -- but it failed and she
