Pechier, a father of three who has been banned from practising medicine, faces life imprisonment if convicted. He has denied the charges.
Controversially, Pechier is not currently behind bars but under judicial supervision, an alternative to pre-trial detention.
“I’ve been waiting for this for 17 years,” said Amandine Iehlen, whose 53-year-old father died of cardiac arrest during kidney surgery in 2008.
An autopsy revealed an overdose of lidocaine, a local anaesthetic.
Prosecutor Etienne Manteaux has said the case was “unprecedented in French legal history”.
‘Zorro’
An investigation was launched in 2017 after suspicious cardiac arrests during operations on patients considered low-risk.
Pechier is suspected of tampering with his colleagues’ paracetamol bags or anaesthesia pouches to create operating room emergencies where he could intervene to show off his supposed resuscitating talents.
“What he is accused of is poisoning healthy patients in order to harm colleagues with whom he was in conflict,” Manteaux said.
“Frederic Pechier was the first responder when cardiac arrest occurred,” he added. “He always had a solution.”
Pechier has argued that the majority of poisonings were the result of “medical errors” made by his colleagues.
“I am being accused of heinous crimes that I did not commit,” he said in 2017.
Some colleagues described the doctor as a “star anaesthetist”, while others said he came across as arrogant and manipulative.
One coworker claimed Pechier was “certain he was the best” and liked to “think of himself as Zorro”.
Over the course of the inquiry, investigators examined more than 70 reports of “serious adverse events”, medical jargon for unexpected complications or deaths among patients.
The cases of 30 patients who suffered cardiac arrest during surgery at the Saint-Vincent Clinic and the Franche-Comte Polyclinic made it to trial.
The investigation was launched in January 2017, after a 36-year-old woman suffered a cardiac arrest during an operation.
Suspicion quickly fell on Pechier, who was detained and charged two months later.
Pechier “has every intention of proving his innocence in this case”, his defence team told AFP.
‘Dizzying case’
A psychological evaluation in 2019 pointed to a “controlling personality” and “perverse traits” – though the claims were roundly criticised by his defence lawyers.
More than 150 civil parties, including a trade union for anaesthetists, will be represented at the trial.
It is a “dizzying case” owing to its “scale, duration and technical complexity”, said Frederic Berna, one of 55 lawyers representing the victims.
Berna said he doubted the court would hear any “sincere and honest explanations from Pechier”.
Before the trial, Pechier said he was “not particularly anxious”.
“I have to fight one last time to bring this to an end,” he told broadcaster BFMTV.
“I’m not tired. I’m not angry. I just want people to listen for once,” he said.
– Agence France-Presse
