New twist in the Frédéric Péchier affair. The anesthetist from Besançon, indicted for more than twenty poisonings, will be able to practice medicine again. His specialty, anesthesia, will however remain prohibited, announced Wednesday, January 11 the general prosecutor’s office of Besançon.
Frédéric Péchier was indicted for twenty-four poisonings in 2019 and is suspected of having committed eight others. His judicial review had previously prohibited him from practicing medicine.
The council of the order of doctors will have to decide in fine if Mr. Péchier, who denies the facts which are reproached to him, will be able to practice again, specifies the parquet floor, relaying a decision of the room of the instruction of the court of call from Besançon.
Nine fatal cases of poisoning
The anesthetist is suspected of having polluted the infusion bags of his colleagues’ patients to cause cardiac arrest, but also to discredit colleagues from Besançon clinics with whom he was in conflict.
The case began when an anesthesiologist at the Saint-Vincent clinic in Besançon sounded the alarm after three unexplained cardiac arrests of her patients in full operation. In January 2017, a judicial investigation was opened, and in March Frédéric Péchier, who worked in this clinic, was indicted and placed under judicial supervision for the first seven cases of alleged poisoning of patients. The management of the clinic then presented sixty-six cases of serious adverse events that had occurred in their establishment to investigators from the Besançon judicial police. These investigations led, in May 2019, to the indictment of Doctor Péchier for seventeen new cases of poisoning, i.e. a total of twenty-four cases concerning patients aged from 4 to 80 years old, including nine fatalities.