A doctor testified Thursday that a few weeks before his death, Diego Maradona expressed concerns over his health.
Doctor Flavio Tunessi said the late footballing icon had told him "I’m not well," as the medical professional gave testimony in the trial of seven health professionals held responsible for the star’s death.
Maradona died from a pulmonary oedema caused by cardiac insufficiency on November 25, 2020 while in house care after neurosurgery.
Doctors, nurses, a psychiatrist and a psychologist are accused of homicide with possible malice aforethought, a term which implies that they were aware that their actions (or inaction) could contribute to his death. An eighth defendant – a female nurse – will be tried separately.
Flavio Tunessi, a traumatologist at the football Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata since 2002, testified at the trial in San Isidro, a northern Greater Buenos Aires suburb near Tigre where Maradona died.
He related that on October 30, 2020, the 60th birthday of the idol who was coaching Gimnasia at that time, he saw him walking away alone from the tribute to him towards the ambulance.
"I approached and said to him: 'Diego, do you need anything?' and he told me 'No, I’m going, I’m not feeling well' and he left," said Tunessi.
The doctor said that on that day he saw a "thinner and downcast" Maradona and that other persons interacting with the "No. 10" that day said that "they did not see him looking good," among them the head of the Argentine Football Association (AFA) Claudio Tapia.
The next day Leopoldo Luque, Maradona’s personal doctor and a defendant in the case, asked his colleague to take him to the Ipensa clinic, where Tunessi worked as a traumatologist, in order to hospitalise him for the purpose of studies.
There they detected that the ex-footballer had a "subdural haematoma" in his head although the clinic’s neurologists, who also testified last Thursday, considered that there was "no surgical urgency."
Ipensa’s chief neurologist, Guillermo Burry, considered that "the clinical state of the patient was not due to the subdural haematoma" and that, given his comorbidities, "it was not an opportune moment" for an operation.
Yet Luque, who is also a neurosurgeon, considered that he had to be operated, deciding to transfer Maradona to the Olivos clinic, where the operation was performed on November 3.
Thursday’s hearing continued with the testimony of a cardiologist attending Maradona at the Ipensa.
The trial will run at least until July with the testimony of dozens of witnesses. The defendants face between eight and 25 years in prison.
– TIMES/AFP
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