A former surgeon at Karolinska University Hospital was accused of operating on three patients in 2011-2012 using an experimental procedure, all of whom subsequently died.
Last year, the local court in Solna ruled that in one out of three cases a doctor had caused “bodily harm” to his patient through surgery, thus imposing a suspended prison sentence on him.
However, an appeals court found him guilty in all three cases in Wednesday’s ruling and sentenced him to two years and six months in prison for grievous bodily harm.
The method has previously made headlines
Macchiarini, once considered a leading physician in regenerative medicine, made headlines in 2011 by performing the world’s first stem cell transplant.
The first transplant was published in the medical journal The Lancet in 2008, and the result has been celebrated as a breakthrough in regenerative medicine. A stem cell researcher has made the new trachea in part using a patient’s own stem cells. According to experts, the groundbreaking research has opened the way for a new era in which new organs can be created in the laboratory.
An independent panel of experts in Sweden later found several problems with Macchiarini’s work, but The Lancet refused to retract the study.
In 2010, the Italian doctor worked at Sweden’s leading hospital, Karolinska Institutet & Hospital in Stockholm. Between 2011 and 2014, Macchiarini performed similar tracheal transplants on eight other patients, in three cases at Karolinska Hospital, MTI reports.
Three died in the experimental procedure
One of his patients survived a transplant after an artificial trachea created by a stem cell researcher was removed and transplanted in Russia in 2014.
According to his critics, Macchiarini violated medical ethics because he used a dangerous and unproven procedure on his patients, falsified his career and distorted his scientific findings.
As a result of these allegations, Macchiarini was expelled from Karolinska Institutet in March 2016 and a case was opened against him, but the investigation was closed in 2017 by the Swedish Public Prosecutor’s Office without charges, as it did not find sufficient evidence against him. However, at the end of 2018, it was decided to resume the previously suspended investigation into the deaths of three of the doctors’ patients.
