Italian surgeon on trial in Sweden for tracheal transplants
Stockholm:
An Italian doctor who made headlines for groundbreaking tracheal surgery was brought to justice in Sweden on Wednesday, charged with assault for having performed the experimental procedure.
Paolo Macchiarini won praise in 2011 after claiming to have performed the world’s first synthetic tracheal transplants while he was a surgeon at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutet.
The procedure was hailed as a breakthrough in regenerative medicine.
But soon there were accusations that the risky operation had been performed on at least one individual who was not critically ill at the time of the operation.
Wearing a blue suit, the 63-year-old listened to a translated sound when prosecutors listed the allegations of “aggravated assault” against three patients.
Karolinska Institutet has confirmed that the three people have since died, but did not directly link the deaths to the operations.
“Paolo Macchiarini has carried out the operation with complete disregard for science and proven experience,” said prosecutor Karin Lundström-Kron in court.
Macchiarini has claimed that they were treatments and not experiments and denied that they were criminally responsible.
“His only motivation has been to treat the patients,” his lawyer, Björn Hurtig, told the court.
– Diminished risks –
In 2013, Karolinska Hospital canceled all transplants and refused to extend Macchiarini’s contract as a surgeon.
A year later, several surgeons at the hospital filed a complaint claiming that Macchiarini had downplayed the risks of the procedure.
Macchiarini performed three operations at Karolinska University Hospital – where he also worked as a surgeon – in 2011 and 2012, using an artificial plastic trachea and covering it with the patient’s own stem cells.
Together with his colleagues, he performed a total of eight such transplants between 2011 and 2014, the other five took place in Russia.
In 2013, Karolinska Hospital canceled all transplants and refused to extend Macchiarini’s contract as a surgeon.
A year later, several surgeons at the hospital filed a complaint claiming that Macchiarini had downplayed the risks of the procedure.
An external review in 2015 found Macchiarini guilty of research errors, but despite being fired, Karolinska Institutet repeatedly defended him until 2018, when it found him and several other researchers guilty.
The university’s rector dropped out due to the scandal, as did a number of other people.
In 2018, the medical journal The Lancet withdrew two articles written by Macchiarini.
The trial, which is being held in Solna District Court near Karolinska Institutet, is planned to last for 13 days.
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