The commotion that dominated Argentina four years ago with the death of star Diego Maradona returns, on a reduced scale, on Tuesday (11). This is when the local court begins the trial of seven members of the former player’s medical team accused of his death.
Doctors, nurses and psychologists were indicted by the court of Buenos Aires province for the crime of simple homicide with eventual intent, which points to cases where the defendants knew the possibility of the death of the victim due to their actions, even if they did not want to provoke it. The penalties range from 8 to 25 years in prison.
Maradona died at age 60 after a cardiorespiratory arrest at her home in Tigre, a municipality in the neighboring city of San Isidro. An investigation pointed out that death could have been avoided if his nearest medical team had taken other actions.
The lawsuit states that the seven people are responsible for the death of the star due to “deficient, inefficient and indifferent assistance and in an inappropriate place” – the house where he received domestic care. He also says that he separated the former player’s family, omitted important information and made his destination “relegated to luck.”
They are accused: the neurosurgeon and personal doctor of Maradona Leopoldo Luque; psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov; Nurse Ricardo Almirón; the doctor Nancy Forlino, from the Swiss Medical Health Plan; the head of nurses Mariano Perroni; the psychologist Carlos Díaz; and the clinical doctor Pedro Di Spagna. There is still an eighth accused who will be judged separately by a popular jury at the request of his defense.
The accused deny that they were negligent. Luque, the neurosurgeon, has already stated in public statements that Maradona was a difficult patient (“when she was upset or felt bad, away all”) and that he resisted certain medical recommendations. He also said that death was unexpected, sudden and without suffering and that the home hospitalization was the insistence of the former player himself.
Former box 10 had undergone surgery to eliminate subdural hematoma, blood accumulation that forms between the brain and the skull earlier that month.
Despite recommendations, he was taken by the private medical team, with the consent of relatives, to recover at home. Its health condition was deteriorated by drug use and lifelong alcohol consumption. In the final stage, he also treated anxiety and depression.
The judicial process lists the clinical picture of Maradona: chronic kidney disease, hepatic cirrhosis, heart failure, chronic neurological deterioration, alcohol and drug dependence, probable psychiatric diseases, added to alcohol abstinence.
The process states that Maradona should not have been authorized by the team to leave the medical clinic where she received post-surgery care on November 11 of that year, nine days before she died at home.
He says that professionals “omitted to provide Maradona proper assistance” and “prevented him from receiving proper medical attention that could have avoided his death, particularly that of the cardiological field.”
The document also states that the necessary cardiological examinations and cardiological controls were maintained after the hospital’s departure, nor the player’s monitoring by cardiac, liver and kidney experts, which would be required by their clinical staff.
The public power says that the team “took advantage of a sphere of power over Maradona” to isolate him from his family, manipulating it and informing that everything happened according to the will of the player, omitting important information about what his health was.
These are accusations that now make the seven professionals sit at the defendants’ bank in a trial expected to extend to at least mid -July this year, with three hearings being held each week.
More than 190 witnesses were summoned to testify, according to the local channel TN (all news). There are a lot of tests: test results, mobile expertise and audio recordings.
The court points out that the seven violated the duties they had in their respective positions, thus “collaborating to a set of factors and rude circumstances that increased the risks outside the allowed margin and caused the fatal result for the patient.”
The former player’s funeral, held a day after his death at Casa Rosada, the headquarters of the Argentine Executive in Buenos Aires, brought together hundreds of thousands of people. He was buried in a cemetery in the Bella Vista region, 35 km from the capital.
