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'Diana would have survived if French medics had not wasted time', says top surgeon TOM KELLY Princess Diana could have survived her car crash had French medics not "squandered" crucial minutes treating her at the scene, her inquest was told yesterday. Professor Thomas Treasure, a leading British surgeon, said there was a "window of opportunity" to get her to hospital for a potentially life-saving operation when she was put in an ambulance 35 minutes after the accident. But vital moments were allowed to "slip away" because medics opted to tend her in the stationary vehicle for another 40 minutes before deciding she was stable enough to leave. French doctors said that without their actions Diana would have been dead on arrival because she was so fragile.
But Professor Treasure said the Princess had been successfully stabilised soon after being put into the ambulance and could have been taken to hospital then. Asked if he felt that they had squandered the time, he said: "It's a hard word, isn't it, but I think opportunities were lost. "They had done a lot of good in that first half an hour but the next big amount of good that could have been done required a surgeon." He questioned the decision of a French doctor in Diana's ambulance to order the driver to go slowly and then to stop for a full five minutes when it was just a few hundred yards from the hospital.
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