Elsevier says it will begin investigating two papers coauthored by disgraced surgeon Paolo Macchiarini "soon", more than a year after two critics of his work formally requested the publisher retract the articles – and nearly a decade after two institutions found him guilty of misconduct for related work.

The papers, published in Biomaterials in 2009 and 2010, include descriptions of a 2008 trachea transplant in Barcelona conducted by Macchiarini – described in The Lancet that year, as well as in a five-year follow-up published in 2013. Both Lancet papers reported a successful surgery and that the patient had a "normal social and working life". In reality, she needed stents, her lung function did not improve and she eventually had a lung removed.

The Barcelona patient survived, but at least three others who underwent Macchiarini’s synthetic trachea transplants eventually died. In 2023, a Swedish court sentenced Macchiarini to 2.5 years in prison for gross assault related to his failed transplants. So far he has accumulated 13 retractions.
 

Source https://retractionwatch.com/2026/08/26/elsevier-to-soon-investigate-two-macchiarini-papers-more-than-a-year-after-retraction-request/

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