STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A Swedish appeals court on Wednesday found Italian surgeon Paolo Macchiarini guilty of gross assault for implanting artificial tracheas in three patients that subsequently died, sentencing him to two-and-a-half years in prison.
The former surgeon at the Karolinska University Hospital, which is linked to the institute that awards the Nobel Prize for Medicine, was charged with performing in 2011-2012 the experimental procedure on three persons which all later died.
A district court in 2022 found him not guilty of aggravated assault in all three cases, and guilty of causing grievous bodily harm in one case, handing down a suspended sentence.
But the Svea Court of Appeals said on Wednesday it had found him guilty in all three cases.
“The Court of Appeal sentences the surgeon to prison for two years and six months for three cases of gross assault,” it said in a statement.
(Reporting by Anna Ringstrom, editing by Terje Solsvik)
