Maradona death trial: Luque ‘denied further tests’ says cardiologist

The last cardiologist to treat Argentine football star Diego Maradona before his death in 2020 said the sports icon’s 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’s hearing in the trial over Maradona’s 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. 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. Franco testified that after performing an electrocardiogram on Maradona he recommended further testing, but the former star’s chief physician, Luque — one of the people facing charges over the former star’s demise — declined to proceed. “I recommended more comprehensive testing to rule out coronary artery disease,” he said in his testimony. He explained the test, which induces stress on the heart via physical exercise or pharmacologically, indicates whether there is an affection. “It’s called a perfusion scan. It’s highly predictive of whether the disease is present. But it wasn’t performed because [Luque] decided against it,” he said. ‘Tired of getting tests’ He wasn’t the only member of the Ipensa Clinic medical staff to testify on his conversations with Luque on Tuesday.  General practitioner Marcos Correa, who oversaw some of the tests done on the former football star, said Luque described the former star as “a depressive patient” and added Luque seemed “genuinely concerned for Maradona.” He said the former footballer was “eager to leave the hospital” and that he told him he was “tired of getting tests done,” but that the decision to move him came from Luque, and that it was done “at the request of Maradona’s entourage.” “Luque 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,” he said. Maradona was transferred to the Olivos clinic and had surgery to remove the subdural hematoma on November 3.  He was later transferred to a rented house in the San Andrés 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. The Argentine star was found unconscious around midday on November 25, 2020 and pronounced dead two hours later. Shortly after, the hearing was called off after a heated altercation between Luque’s lawyer, Francisco Oneto, prosecutor Patricio Ferrari, and judge Alberto Gaig.