In Romania, a cardiologist and four other doctors are at the center of a scandal. They are suspected of fraudulently removing heart implants from the dead to reuse them in patients, Bucharest prosecutors said.
Dan Tesloianu, a cardiologist employed at Iasi hospital, was remanded in custody on charges of abuse of power and corruption by order of the Bucharest court, according to a press release from prosecutors on Saturday night. He is accused of endangering the lives of his patients between 2017 and 2022 by illegally using about 238 heart implants of unknown origin, some of which had been removed from cadavers.
Wrong diagnoses
The cardiologist is also suspected of having overseen a network of at least four other doctors who would have made the implants available to him without the consent of the patients or their relatives. “The insertion of these cardiac implants was unnecessary in a majority of the procedures and was triggered after misdiagnosis” or treatments that produced specific symptoms, the prosecutor’s press release said.
Investigations have been launched in several regions against “doctors who performed surgical interventions in violation of the procedures and rules for the use of cardiac implants”. Nine people were heard by the courts.
Romania is the country within the European Union, which it joined in 2007, which allocates the smallest part of its budget to the healthcare system, which has been plagued by several corruption scandals in recent years.