Surgeon Paolo Macchiarini is sentenced to probation.
According to the court, he has been guilty of a case of causing bodily harm.
He is acquitted of two counts.
In September 2020, surgeon Paolo Macchiarini was charged with three counts of aggravated assault.
Today, he was sentenced to a suspended sentence for causing bodily harm, a felony, in one case.
He is acquitted on two of three charges.
The surgeon was charged with surgery with synthetic tracheas which he performed on three patients in the years 2011 and 2012. According to the district court’s assessment, the procedures did not correspond to science and proven experience.
All patients died
In the autumn of 2010, the surgeon Paolo Macchiarini was employed as a visiting professor at Karolinska Institutet (KI) and chief physician at Karolinska University Hospital (KS).
The following year, he performed the world’s first transplant of a synthetic trachea prepared with bone marrow cells. The groundbreaking operation received a great deal of attention. From 2011 to 2012, two more patients with synthetic trachea were operated on at KS.
All patients later died.
The first 2.5 years after surgery, the second after four months. The third suffered from very severe complications that required continuous hospital care until her death in March 2017.
When it became clear how the transplants had gone, Macchiarini was stopped in April 2013 from having more surgery, in November of the same year his employment at KS ended. He was still employed at KI until 2016.
Third intervention not justifiable
With regard to the patients’ condition, the district court nevertheless considers that the interventions on the first two patients were justifiable. They therefore believe that the surgeon should be released from liability, as they believe that he acted in distress in the criminal law sense.
At the time of the operation on the third patient, however, the court held that Paolo Macchiarini should have brought with him experience from the first two operations and therefore refrained from performing it.
– The benefit that the treatment method could be expected to bring was simply not in proportion to the risks that the procedure was associated with, say the legal judges in the case, Ewa Lindbäck and Björn Skånsberg.
The district court also considers that Paolo Macchiarini has realized the risks of the interventions.
However, nothing has come to light that suggests that he was indifferent to the fact that the procedure would lead to severe bodily injuries and long-term, severe suffering. He should therefore not be convicted of an intentional assault offense but of the negligent offense causing bodily injury “, the court further writes.
Facts
Probation
Conditional sentence is a sanction instead of imprisonment, which means that the convicted person receives a probation period of two years without supervision.
If the person commits new crimes in the meantime, the probationary period can be extended or another sanction imposed. Conditional judgment can be combined with e.g. daily fines or community service.
Source: The Public Prosecutor’s Office
Read more