Bad Surgeon: Love Under the Knife on Netflix tells the story of Paolo Macchiarini, a once world-famous surgeon who claimed to have developed a revolutionary new treatment for throat conditions — the problem was, many of Macchiarini’s patients later died.
As the hit Netflix true-crime documentary series explains, Macchiarini said he could implant a plastic trachea covered in the patient’s stem cells who were often facing life-threatening conditions, and once those stem cells did their thing, et voila — their windpipes were like new. For many, however, the decision to go under Macchiarini’s knife had deadly consequences.
Though Macchiarini performed several surgeries before his personal and professional lies caught up with him, here’s a closer look at the eight best-documented cases of patients who received Macchiarini’s windpipe transplant and later lost their lives.
Andemariam Beyene
In 2011, Paolo Macchiarini was a world-renowned physician employed at the Karolinska Institutet, a leading medical institute in Sweden. That acclaim led medical Andemariam Beyene, an Eritrean man living in Iceland with cancer, to Macchiarini as a last resort.
Beyene’s manufactured windpipe transplant was big news, and Beyene lived a few years after the initial operation. He died, however, in 2013. His autopsy revealed a chronic lung infection and a clot in his lung. Meanwhile, Macchiarini’s implanted trachea was no longer in place (via The Macchiarini Case).
Keziah Shorten
Also in 2011, Keziah Shorten was an English teenager living with throat cancer who had received a donated organic trachea transplant from Paolo Macchiarini. However, that transplant failed, and Macchiarini gave her a manufactured replacement.
Shorten’s second operation took place in Sept. 2011, but by Jan. 2012, she was dead. Her death is not believed to have been caused by Macchiarini’s operation, but rather because of her underlying cancer. Still, the plastic windpipe transplant did nothing to improve her condition (via For Better Science).
Christopher Lyles
Like Andemariam Beyene and Keziah Shorten, Christopher Lyles had a terminal throat cancer diagnosis when he contacted Paolo Macchiarini in 2011. The 30-year-old American underwent Macchiarini’s procedure at Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden, and then returned home to Maryland, but by 2012, Lyles was dead, The New York Times reported.
Lyles’ body was not autopsied, so his exact cause of death is unclear, but as Bad Surgeon on Netflix explains, Lyles lived with complications seemingly related to Macchiarini’s procedure once back home from Sweden.
Yulia Tuulik
Unlike other Paolo Macchiarini patients, Yuli Tuulik of Russia had a tracheostomy after a car accident. She managed to breathe by other means, but in 2012, Macchiarini presented his trachea transplant as a quality-of-life improvement. Macchiarini operated on Tuulik twice: The first windpipe failed, and Macchiarini implanted another, but in 2014, Tuulik died, according to Science. According to Bad Surgeon, however, Tuulik complained of “rotting” on her body in the surgical area, USA Today reports.
Around that same time, Alexander Zozulya, another Macchiarini patient in Russia, died in 2014 under unknown circumstances. Macchiarini was fired from the Russian medical institute where he was employed for practicing medicine in Russia without a license, among other irregularities.
Yesim Cetir
In 2011, Yesim Cetir’s trachea was damaged during an unrelated surgery, and after several Paolo Macchiarini surgeries to address the issue, in 2012, Macchiarini implanted a plastic trachea in Cetir’s throat. Like Yulia Tuulik, the first windpipe collapsed, and Macchiarini gave her another one. That trachea, too, was removed and replaced by a donated one, but Cetir lived with medical issues for the rest of her life — some were breathing-related. Cetir died in 2017, The Local reported.
Hannah Warren
The Hannah Warren story is among the most heartbreaking of all the fatalities related to Paolo Macchiarini’s controversial procedure. As of 2013, Warren was just two years old. She was born without a trachea, and Macchiarini gave her one at a medical center in Illinois, where she lived. After that surgery, Warren’s esophagus failed to heal, and another surgery was performed to address the issue. Warren died just a few months later, according to The New York Times.
Sadiq Kanaan and Dmitri Onogda
Little is known about another Paolo Macchiarini patient, Sadiq Kanaan, a Jordanian man who received a synthetic trachea from Macchiarini in Russia in 2013. It is known that Kanaan later died, but the circumstances and his exact cause of death are unknown, BBC News reported. Another Russian man, Dmitri Onogda, survived Macchiarini’s procedure. Because of later complications, however, the Onogda operation was reversed.
Based on these cases mentioned, among other evidence, Macchiarini was tried in Sweden in 2022 for “causing bodily harm” to three patients and convicted on one count, USA Today reported. Macchiarini received a suspended sentence, but in June 2023, a Swedish appeals court bumped that sentence to 2 1/2 years.
In 2019, Macchiarini, who has reportedly performed 20 artificial windpipe surgeries, according to the AP, received a 16-month prison sentence in Italy for forgery and abuse of office. Macchiarini maintains a medical license and claims each procedure was performed in “good faith.” Meanwhile, his lawyers have said he will appeal the Swedish appeals court ruling.
