A former surgeon at Gap hospital, member of the orthopedics and traumatology service, suspected of having used a disputed intervention technique, will be tried in March by the Gap correctional court, AFP learned on Tuesday 4 January with the prosecution.
A preliminary investigation targeting this doctor was opened at the end of 2018 by the prosecution and entrusted to the central office for the fight against attacks on the environment and public health (OCLAESP).
Read also In Gap, a surgeon transferred after denouncing a colleague
The trial will take place from March 23 to 25, the prosecution said in a statement.
The surgeon is accused of having carried out "
biomedical research without authorization and without consent, committed during the period from January 2015 to December 2017
".
Suspended since February 2021, then transferred automatically five months later after disciplinary proceedings, he faces up to 3 years' imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros.
Use of an "unvalidated" practice
Specialized in spine surgery, he is said to have operated at Gap hospital on nearly 120 patients by performing percutaneous disc cementoplasty, a technique practiced abroad but considered "
not validated
" in France by the French Society of Spinal Surgery. (SFCR) and which involves injecting cement into one or more vertebrae of the spine to strengthen them. Asked by AFP, Me Alexis Chabert, the surgeon's lawyer, indicated that his client "
firmly denies having committed any offense
" and maintains having "
acted in the sole interest of his patients
".
The practices of this surgeon in the orthopedics and traumatology department had been denounced from 2018 to several authorities in the medical community by a colleague who had then been suspended.
In March 2021, the Defender of Rights had, however, recognized his quality of “
whistleblower
”.
Following these denunciations, existing tensions between the practitioners of the service had exploded in broad daylight and plunged the hospital into a serious internal crisis which had caused at the beginning of the year 2021 the cancellation of surgical operations, resignations and cascading disease stops.