Solna District Court is convicting the surgeon Paolo Macchiarini for one case of causing bodily injury, serious crime.

Macchiarini is found not guilty in two other cases and convicted to suspended sentence.

The surgeries went against “science and proven experience” but can be viewed as justifiable from the patients’ conditions. In the third case, there were reasons to refrain due to the firt two cases, states the court.

Charged with aggravated assault

Macchiarini went on trial April 27 in Sweden charged with aggravated assault, 11 years after he first performed experimental transplants of synthetic windpipes on patients. The trial has centered on three transplants Macchiarini performed between 2011 and 2013, when a synthetic windpipe coated with the patient’s stem cells was surgically implanted in two men and a woman at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. All three transplant recipients have died since they had the operations.

Read more: Paolo Macchiarini – In the name of science?

During the trial, Macchiarini’s team defended the experimental treatments as the result of teamwork, having been thoroughly discussed and decided upon with senior colleagues, and the doctor stressed that he wanted to save lives.

Throughout the trial, the prosecutors argued that his surgeries went against “science and proven experience”. They also said the surgeon had acted with “reckless intent”, since he continued performing the treatments even though complications arose with earlier patients, reported AFP.

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