According to the Romanian police, a group of medics is said to have jeopardized the lives of hundreds of people several times. The doctors used pacemakers that they illegally removed from corpses. In addition, the operations should not have been medically necessary at all.
The Romanian authorities are investigating a network of doctors who are said to have performed non-medically necessary heart operations and inserted implants into patients that were previously removed from corpses. According to the public prosecutor's office, a suspect was taken into custody on Saturday evening. The cardiologist at a hospital in Iasi used a total of 238 medical implants "of unknown origin" between 2017 and 2022, the investigators said.
According to the prosecutor, some of the implants used by the doctor, such as pacemakers or defibrillators, were taken from dead patients. By illegally reusing it, he put the lives of the recipients at risk. The cardiologist is suspected of leading a network with at least four other doctors who are said to have obtained implants for him.
A large part of the operations to insert implants was medically unfounded, the investigating authority said. "Fictitious diagnoses" were communicated to the patients, and in some cases heart symptoms were specifically produced in them by the administration of medication.
Romania, which has been part of the European Union since 2007, spends the least money on its healthcare system in an EU comparison. The country's public health system has been rocked by numerous scandals and corruption scandals in recent years.
(This article was first published on Sunday, February 19, 2023.)
