The Clínic surgeon known as 'Doctor Death' is already in a Catalan prison

BarcelonaThe Italian surgeon Paolo Macchiarini, baptized as Doctor Death in a documentary, entered in a Catalan prison in September 2024. The famous doctor was sentenced by a Swedish court to two and a half years in prison for serious assault on three patients between 2011 and 2014, to whom he transplanted a plastic trachea bathed in stem cells. As Macchiarini has lived in Catalonia since landing at the Hospital Clínic in Barcelona in 2004, in a luxurious villa in Cabrils, he requested to serve his sentence in a Catalan penitentiary, a request that was accepted by the National Court. Finally, after all possible appeals and once the sentence was final, Macchiarini entered the Quatre Camins prison.

The doctor is currently in second grade in module 7 of the penitentiary center located in Roca del Vallès, a specific area for people convicted of blood crimes. "He barely interacts with anyone; he's only friends with one person," sources at Quatre Camins prison told ARA. They say he's "very polite" to both officials and prisoners. Since his sentence is thirty months, he'll soon be eligible for prison benefits.

The Macchiarini scandal at Stockholm's Karolinska Hospital led to two documentaries, Dr. Death: Deadly Deception and Bad surgeon, from Netflix, which describes the therapeutic cruelty the surgeon carried out on several patients, who, in more than one case, died in agony. Three doctors at Karolinska Hospital accused the Italian of falsifying data, but the Swedish center's management, despite having to admit some errors, renewed his contract and ended up firing the surgeons who had uncovered the fraud. A documentary on Swedish television SVT revealed new evidence about Macchiarini's methods, as he had not previously conducted animal tests to be able to perform transplants with synthetic tracheas. A revelation that forced the hospital's leadership to resign and the prestigious Italian doctor to terminate his contract. Many patients had already lost their lives, but some of the lawsuits prospered until the Swedish courts convicted him.

An investigation by ARA published in 2024 revealed that Macchiarini's methods, which resulted in the deaths of several patients, had already been used in Barcelona years earlier. For four years, the famous surgeon was head of the thoracic surgery department at the Clínic, until his contract was terminated on December 1, 2009, and he quietly left through the back door to Florence. From there, shortly after, he ended up in Sweden. Through around fifty sources, the ARA reconstructed how Macchiarini operated on patients who didn't need to enter the operating room, or how many people who came to the Clinic seeking hope suffered after their surgeries and ended up dying. They also reconstructed how he operated on a girl without authorization from the relevant authorities or performed procedures without sufficient scientific basis, even going so far as to falsify reports. It also came to light that he stole tissue from the hospital to perform operations at the private clinic.