British Diana inquest hears details of fatal injuries

Nov 19, 2007, 18:17 GMT

London - The British inquest into the death of Princess Diana 10 years ago heard detailed accounts Monday from specialists involved in her treatment who said the force of the crash impact caused a key blood vessel attached to her heart to tear.

The court heard that the injuries suggested that Diana, who was not wearing a seat belt, would have been sitting sideways in the back of the Mercedes during the car crash in a Paris underpass, and that her 'heart was thrown violently forward' inside her chest.

Professor Andre Lienhart, who was giving evidence from Paris by video-link to the London-based inquest, said there were no recorded cases of patients with the same injuries 'arriving at hospital alive.'

Citing an account from an emergency doctor, Jean-Marc Martino, who treated Diana at the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital after the crash on August 31, 1997, Lienhart said Diana was agitated and shouting, and at one point ripped a drip from her arm.

'She was shouting...things in English which were comprehensible yet incoherent,' Lienhart reported.

Lienhart, who later investigated all aspects of Diana's treatment for a French magistrate, said an assistant had to hold the princess's arm by force to get a drip in but she quickly pulled it out.

'She was agitated, she refused treatment ... he decided to inject some drugs to reduce the agitation, for her to accept treatment.'

The court heard that the force of the impact caused a key blood vessel attached to Diana's heart to tear. It also damaged the pericardium, the organ's casing.

As a result the princess suffered massive internal bleeding when the car crashed in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel.

Diana survived for three-and-a-half hours after the crash but was finally declared dead at the hospital following two heart attacks and nearly two hours of open heart massage.

'There was a very strong and brutal rotational movement,' Lienhart told the jury, during which the heart had been projected 'very violently to her right-hand side.'