Death of criminal lawyer Hervé Temime, following an aortic dissection

in collaboration with

Dr Gérald Kierzek (Medical Director of Doctissimo)

“The bar is an orphan. Hervé Temime has just left us. He was a huge lawyer. He marked an entire generation with his intelligence, his humanity and his talent. I think fondly of his family and loved ones“. These words were written on Twitter by Eric Dupont-Moretti, Minister of Justice and himself a lawyer. He thus paid tribute to his colleague Hervé Temime, who died yesterday of an aortic dissection at the age of 66. .

A lawyer who left his mark on his generation

The tenor of the bar, who defended Bernard Tapie, Gérard Depardieu or the lawyer Thierry Herzog in the Bismuth case, held his last pleading on February 8. He had a heart attack a few days later, on February 24, the evening of the funeral of his friend Pierre Haïk, also a lawyer. It was finally an aortic dissection that took him away yesterday.

Since the announcement of his death, a shower of tributes has been paid, celebrating his “humanity”, his “tremendous talent” and a “great lawyer”.

What is an aortic dissection?

An aortic dissection most commonly occurs at the arch of the aorta, the “bridge” the vessel makes as it exits the heart and descends toward the abdomen. A kind of false channel is created at this place which will be dug by the arterial pressure.

Dissection therefore occurs when the inner layer of the aortic wall tears and separates from the middle layer of the aortic wall. If this yields, the aortic dissection then leads to an often massive hemorrhage. It is a very serious condition that can be complicated by strokes.

What to do in case of suspected aortic dissection?

According to Dr Gérald Kierzek, emergency physician and medical director of Doctissimo, “aortic dissection manifests as chest pain in the back and its main risk factor is high blood pressure“.

According to him, “if a person has had chest pain for 15 minutes, the emergency department must be notified by calling 15. As emergency physicians, we have the reflex of taking the blood pressure in both arms. There is then a difference in the results between the right and the left. This is a consequence of the difference in blood distribution, which is no longer uniform. A scanner must be performed urgently, to precisely locate the affected area and depending on the case, close monitoring is required or surgery may be considered.

Aortic dissection is unfortunately quickly fatal, in more than eight out of ten cases. “The prognosis is direconfirms Dr. Kierzek, “this is typically the type of health problem for which mortality is unfortunately very high” he concludes.