\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t The last cardiologist to treat Argentine football star Diego Maradona before his death in 2020 said the sports icon\u2019s head doctor, Leopoldo Luque, rejected his suggestions to carry out more extensive testing to discard a potential heart disease.<\/p>\n
Cardiologist Oscar Franco was the key witness at Tuesday\u2019s hearing in the trial over Maradona\u2019s death at the age of 60. Franco treated Maradona shortly before his death, when the former footballer underwent a series of medical tests at the Ipensa Clinic in La Plata.<\/p>\n
The former star was admitted to the clinic for a battery of tests after a public appearance in October in which he appeared visibly unwell. There, doctors diagnosed him with a subdural hematoma, for which he underwent surgery less than a month before his death.<\/p>\n
Franco testified that after performing an electrocardiogram on Maradona he recommended further testing, but the former star\u2019s chief physician, Luque \u2014 one of the people facing charges over the former star\u2019s demise \u2014 declined to proceed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI recommended more comprehensive testing to rule out coronary artery disease,\u201d he said in his testimony.<\/p>\n
He explained the test, which induces stress on the heart via physical exercise or pharmacologically, indicates whether there is an affection.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s called a perfusion scan. It\u2019s highly predictive of whether the disease is present. But it wasn\u2019t performed because [Luque] decided against it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Tired of getting tests\u2019 He wasn\u2019t the only member of the Ipensa Clinic medical staff to testify on his conversations with Luque on Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
General practitioner Marcos Correa, who oversaw some of the tests done on the former football star, said Luque described the former star as \u201ca depressive patient\u201d and added Luque seemed \u201cgenuinely concerned for Maradona.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the former footballer was \u201ceager to leave the hospital\u201d and that he told him he was \u201ctired of getting tests done,\u201d but that the decision to move him came from Luque, and that it was done \u201cat the request of Maradona\u2019s entourage.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLuque wanted to perform the surgery [on the subdural hematoma], while [Ipensa neuroneurosurgeon Guillermo Burry] wanted to wait, so they decided to transfer him to another facility,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Maradona was transferred to the Olivos clinic and had surgery to remove the subdural hematoma on November 3.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was later transferred to a rented house in the San Andr\u00e9s gated community in Tigre, Buenos Aires Province, where he was to recover under home care. Witnesses in the trial have since testified that the property was ill-equipped to accommodate a patient in his condition.<\/p>\n
The Argentine star was found unconscious around midday on November 25, 2020 and pronounced dead two hours later.<\/p>\n
Shortly after, the hearing was called off after a heated altercation between Luque\u2019s lawyer, Francisco Oneto, prosecutor Patricio Ferrari, and judge Alberto Gaig.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The last cardiologist to treat Argentine football star Diego Maradona before his death in 2020 said the sports icon\u2019s head doctor, Leopoldo Luque, rejected his suggestions to carry out more extensive testing to discard a potential heart disease. Cardiologist Oscar Franco was the key witness at Tuesday\u2019s hearing in the trial over Maradona\u2019s death at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":62835,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[960,1866,3157,67],"tags":[1865,1863,3155,1369],"class_list":["post-62834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-diego-maradona","category-maradona","category-maradona-trial","category-sports","tag-diego-maradona","tag-maradona","tag-maradona-trial","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/service.codeus.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}