Macchiarini’s last ”windpipe-patient” has died

Uppdaterad 20 mars 2017

Publicerad 20 mars 2017

The last patient to have survived operations to insert a synthetic trachea, “windpipe”, at the hands of surgeon Paolo Macchiarini has died in a US hospital, stated the patient’s father on Facebook.

Yeşim Çetir was the fifth ever patient to receive one of Paolo Macchiarini’s plastic trachea implants. In the summer of 2012 she left her college studies in Turkey, hoping to rectify a healthcare injury for which no surgery was available in Turkey. Earlier, during treatment for the hand sweat she had been suffering from, her trachea had been damaged.

She was to be given a new trachea by Macchiarini

At the Karolinska University Hospital in Solna, Sweden, star surgeon Paolo Macchiarini was to supply her with a synthetic trachea implant that had been treated with her own stem cells.

Macchiarini-skandalen

But the implant failed to graft and, after a second unsuccessful operation, Yeşim was now going to have to live the rest of her life in intensive care. To avoid suffocation, her respiratory tract had to be cleared of phlegm by suction every fourth hour.

“I lie here, and take a walk in the corridor; it’s all I do,” said Yeşim before she was moved from Sweden.

After three years in intensive care and hundreds of operations, Yeşim was taken to the US where she was to get a new chance – of a transplanted, donated trachea.

Underwent major surgery

After she had waited for nearly ten months in the US, a suitable donator was located. In May 2016 Yeşim underwent transplant surgery which took seventeen hours. One lung, the œsophagus, and the trachea were transplanted. The transplanted œsophagus had to be removed due to complications.

The Macchiarini case is one of the biggest medical scandals of our day. It concerns experimental surgery performed without the necessary permits or any pre-testing on animals, all followed by publication of embellished and inaccurate surgery reports. Three patients underwent the surgery at the Karolinska in Sweden with fatal result. Four patients underwent the same procedure in Russia, where three of them have died.

The scandal shook Swedish research

The scandal shook research circles in Sweden. Several investigations levelled grave criticism at procedures both at the Karolinska Institute and the Karolinska University Hospital. Following the SVT documentary series broadcast in early 2016, the Institute’s chairperson, its rector, and others in top management resigned or were dismissed.

Paolo Macchiarini himself, who has been accused of cheating in his research, was eventually forced to relinquish his guest professorship at the Karolinska Institute in advance. Today he is a researcher at the Kazan Federal University in Russia.

Macchiarini-skandalen

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