Diego Maradona is expected to remain hospitalised for more than a week while doctors treat health problems ascribed to excess alcohol consumption, overeating and smoking.
Routine tests detected some ”alterations” affecting Maradona’s liver, his personal physician Alfredo Cahe said on Saturday, but he expected those liver functions would become normal in the next few days.
Cahe added Maradona remained stable and making progress for a third straight day on treatment for withdrawal of alcohol and tobacco. His life was not reported in danger.
”We are evaluating things and I believe we are going to have him here more than a week,” Cahe said after visiting the soccer great in a 13th-floor hospital suite.
Maradona was brought by ambulance last Thursday to the private Guemes Sanatorium, where he remained under sedation to ease possible side affects of detoxification.
In a daily update to reporters, Cahe said it was still being considered whether to send Maradona for follow-up rehabilitation in Switzerland.
”The Switzerland idea is really ideal,” Cahe said, adding it would be subject to approval by Maradona. He did not say when or exactly where in Switzerland he was considering sending Maradona, nor exactly what the treatment would entail.
Maradona led Argentina to the 1986 World Cup title and the final in 1990. In 2001, Fifa declared him one of the greatest players in soccer history, alongside Pele.
But off the field, he has battled cocaine addiction and obesity.
In March 2005, Maradona underwent gastric bypass surgery in Colombia, and shed up to 50kg.
Maradona was hospitalised in 2000 in Uruguay and in 2004 in Buenos Aires, both times for life-threatening problems doctors tied to past cocaine use.
Cahe has said excessive drinking, eating and cigar smoking was to blame for the latest episode, not cocaine, and added that Maradona’s social ”environment” was his biggest enemy.
Following the hospitalisation, a Colombian doctor who performed the gastric bypass two years ago said Maradona had failed to return for regular checkups that were necessary for a patient who had undergone such surgery.
”Any patient who undergoes this sort of procedure needs to submit to regular checkups to make sure they’re following recovery instructions,” Francisco Holguin, head of the Medihelp Service clinic, told Caracol Radio. ”But in Maradona’s case there was no follow-up.”
Without contact, it was impossible for doctors to monitor whether Maradona was abiding by strict orders to exercise and maintain a low-calorie diet needed for the procedure to have lasting success, Holguin added.
Maradona failed a doping test in 1991 and was banned for 15 months. He failed another drug test at the 1994 World Cup in the United States. He retired in 1997. – Sapa-AP