Stockholm, June 21, (dpa/GNA) – In a sensational trial in Sweden related to the transplantation of artificial windpipes, a former surgeon was sentenced to prison on Wednesday.
A Stockholm court of appeal, stepped up the suspended sentence imposed by a lower court and sentenced the physician to two years and six months in prison for grievous bodily harm.
The Stockholm court ruled that physical harm and suffering had been inflicted on the patients in all three cases. However, the lower court had found the doctor guilty of only one of the cases a year ago.
Both the defence and the prosecution appealed the verdict.
The prominent surgeon was charged with grievous bodily harm for interventions on three patients – two men and one woman – in 2011 and 2012.
He denied wrongdoing and stated that the operations were life-saving measures, and the only alternative for the three patients.
The prosecution, on the other hand, described his actions as mere experiments on humans.
The physician performed the first transplant in 2011 at Stockholm’s Karolinska University Hospital. The procedure was originally heralded as a scientific breakthrough.
At the time, a cancer patient was implanted with an artificial trachea covered with stem cells, but complications later arose and the patient subsequently died, as did the two other patients who were the subject of the trial.
GNA