A doctor who treated Diego Maradona and later witnessed his autopsy stated that the idol could have improved within 48 hours if he had received a diuretic, during the trial in Argentina for the former player’s death in 2020.
“He had fluid in the pericardium, in the pleura, in the abdomen,” said intensivist Mario Schiter. “(With a diuretic) in approximately 48 hours he should be clearly better,” said the specialist who treated Maradona in the early 2000s and later participated as an observer in the autopsy in 2020.
The doctor said he saw “patients like this every day in intensive care, who arrive with congestive failure.”
“We de-volume them with diuretics and after 12 hours they are home,” he said.
Schiter testified for almost five hours at the tenth hearing of the trial taking place in San Isidro, 30 kilometers north of Buenos Aires.
His testimony added to that of a dozen experts who pointed out that Maradona had “water everywhere” at the time of his death, due to the amount of edema found on his body.
The world champion with Argentina in 1986 died of pulmonary edema and cardiorespiratory arrest on November 25, 2020, while undergoing home hospitalization following uncomplicated neurosurgery carried out three weeks earlier.
The main accused, the star’s neurosurgeon and personal doctor, Leopoldo Luque, led to a scandal that ended with the abrupt suspension of the day’s session.
Luque played the video of the former player’s autopsy without warning about the images it contained. One of the idol’s daughters, Gianinna, was present in the room, who was unable to leave the audience before images of her father’s corpse were shown.
When the video of the idol’s lifeless body was shown, Gianinna Maradona ran towards the exit shouting “You are a son of a bitch!”.
During the hearings, which Gianinna frequently attends, these types of images are usually reproduced. But lawyers always warn her in advance so she can leave the room.
In addition to Luque, six other health professionals face charges of intentional homicide, which implies that they were aware that their actions could lead to death. They could face up to 25 years in prison. An eighth defendant will be tried separately in a jury trial.
This is the second trial. The first was annulled in 2025 because of a judge who was making a clandestine documentary.
