[5][6] Previously considered a pioneer for using both biological and synthetic scaffolds seeded with patients' own stem cells as trachea transplants, Macchiarini was a visiting professor and director on a temporary contract at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet (KI) from 2010.
[9][10] Urban Lendahl, the secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, resigned in February 2016, owing to his involvement in recruiting Macchiarini to KI.
[13] After being dismissed from KI, Macchiarini worked at the Kazan Federal University in Russia until that institution terminated his project in April 2017, effectively firing him.
[22][23] Sweden's Expert Group on Scientific Misconduct found evidence of research fraud by Macchiarini and his co-authors in six papers and called for them to be retracted.
[26] According to Germany's Hannover Medical School, he never had a salaried position there, but was head of the department of thoracic and vascular surgery at the Heidehaus Hanover hospital between 1999 and 2004.
[26] Later in 2010, Macchiarini was appointed as a visiting professor at the Karolinska Institute (KI) in Stockholm and as a part-time position as surgeon at the affiliated university hospital.
[26] Macchiarini made ties in Russia after he gave a master class in 2010, at the invitation of politician Mikhail Batin; a few months later he did a trachea transplant there which was widely covered in Russian media.
Similar to the one done for Castillo, this was on a ten-year-old Irish boy, Ciaran Finn-Lynch, at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.
In 2010, Macchiarini implanted a seeded donated trachea in a 25-year-old woman in Russia, Zhadyra Iglikova, while working with surgeon Vladimir Parshin.
[37] The operation occurred in June 2011 and was widely covered in the media, including a front page story in The New York Times.
Macchiarini obliged, creating a fully synthetic trachea seeded with stem cells from Lyles and implanting it at KI in November 2011.
[36]: 9 [39] In June 2012, Macchiarini implanted a fully synthetic seeded trachea in Yulia Tuulik at Kuban State Medical University.
[15] Also in June 2012, Macchiarini implanted a second synthetic seeded trachea on Alexander Zozulya, who also had a tracheostomy resulting from a car accident and whose life was not in danger.
[37] Turkish national Yesim Cetir underwent a routine surgery in 2011 to treat excessive sweating in her hands, but due to an error her trachea was severely injured and her left lung was damaged.
[43] In August 2013 Sadiq Kanaan received a fully synthetic seeded tracheal implant from Macchiarini at Kuban State Medical University.
[14] In June 2014, Macchiarini implanted a fully synthetic seeded trachea in Dmitri Onogda at the Kuban State Medical University.
[49][50][52] In August 2015, after considering the findings and a rebuttal provided by Macchiarini, KI vice-chancellor Anders Hamsten found that he had acted "without due care" but had not committed misconduct.
While Macchiarini admitted that the synthetic trachea did not work in the current state, he did not agree that trying it on several additional patients without further testing had been inappropriate.
[13] In October 2016, the BBC broadcast a three-part Storyville documentary, Fatal Experiments: The Downfall of a Supersurgeon, directed by Bosse Lindquist and based on the earlier Swedish programmes about Macchiarini.
The board published its findings in October 2017, and concluded that all six were the result of scientific misconduct, in particular by failing to report the complications and deaths that occurred after the interventions; one of the articles also claimed that the procedure had been approved by an ethics committee, when this had not happened.
[36][77] Another report was issued in early September that examined the behavior of the institute; it was authored by a committee led by Sten Heckscher.
[80] Shortly afterwards Harriet Wallberg and Anders Hamsten were removed from the judging panel that is responsible for annually choosing the Nobel Prize for Medicine, selection of which is additionally overseen by Karolinska Institutet.
[82] On 29 September 2020, Mikael Björk, director of Public Prosecution in Sweden indicted an unnamed surgeon on charges of aggravated assault.
[84][6] On 21 June 2023 however, his sentence was increased to two years and six months imprisonment after being found guilty of gross assault against three of his patients by an appeals court in Stockholm.
A wedding to Alexander was planned to be the social event of the year with Pope Francis officiating, Andrea Bocelli and Elton John singing, Enoteca Pinchiorri catering, and numerous celebrities attending.
[9][93] Macchiarini is reported to have claimed that Pope Francis had given his personal blessing for the wedding between the couple, both said to be divorcees, and would host the ceremony at Castel Gandolfo.
[57][9] The article paints him as a serial fabulist, and as "the extreme form of a con man", remarking that "the fact that he could keep all the details straight and compartmentalize these different lives and lies is really amazing.
[97] The second series of the podcast's television adaptation premiered on December 21, 2023 and centered on Macchiarini, portrayed by actor Édgar Ramírez.