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Juan Maeso

Spanish anaesthetist sentenced to 1,933 years in prison for infecting hundreds of patients with hepatitis C

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 2, 2026
Entity authorityQ6300289 ↗
Source-derived summary

Juan Maeso Vélez (1942 – 31 March 2026) was a Spanish anaesthetist who was sentenced to 1,933 years in prison for infecting hundreds of patients with hepatitis C, after using the same needles to give both himself and the patients opioids.

Maeso infected 275 people between 1988 and 1997. He was sentenced to 1,933 years in prison, but the most he could serve under Spanish law was 20 years. Maeso was ordered to pay 500,000 euros (US$680,000) to each victim or their survivors.

He was released from prison in 2023, after 15 years of imprisonment, due to his medical condition.

Maeso died at a hospital on 31 March 2026, at the age of 84.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Juan Maeso” as spanish anaesthetist sentenced to 1,933 years in prison for infecting hundreds of patients with hepatitis C. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Juan, Maeso and Spanish.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1942, 2026, 1988, 1997—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1942-01-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Juan, Maeso and Spanish providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Juan Maeso”, the useful work is to connect “spanish anaesthetist sentenced to 1,933 years in prison for infecting hundreds of patients with hepatitis C” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6300289. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942, 2026, 1988 and 1997.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Juan Maeso” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.