Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona returned to the hospital with abdominal pain on Friday, 48 hours after being released from two weeks of treatment for alcoholic hepatitis, his doctor said.
Maradona (46) was not in danger but may have a recurrence of hepatitis, Dr Alfredo Cahe told radio and television.
”When someone has strong abdominal pain it seems prudent to me to do some primary testing and decide whether he goes home or is rehospitalised,” Cahe, who has been Maradona’s doctor since the star was 15, told Cronica television.
Maradona was captain when Argentina won its second Soccer World Cup victory in 1986. The country’s beloved soccer legend, who has had a string of health problems since he retired 10 years ago, gets blanket media coverage at home, complete with news conferences by panels of doctors.
A crowd of journalists, television crews and onlookers gathered around the private Sanatorio de los Arcos clinic in the capital, where he was admitted.
The case even attracted the attention of the country’s health minister, who criticised Maradona’s team of doctors for not getting his health condition under control.
Gines Gonzalez Garcia said Maradona was getting ”frightful” treatment, adding, ”It’s like being aboard an airplane in a storm, without a pilot.”
”They have to take a decision about his future and his health independent of all the pressures [related to his fame],” said the minister, who is himself a physician. ”I’m speaking as an Argentine, not as a doctor, as someone who loves Maradona as all Argentines do.”
Maradona had left the hospital on Wednesday, saying he was totally recovered from alcoholic hepatitis and pledging to follow doctors’ orders not to drink.
At the time, he said nothing would stop him from going to Sunday’s match between his old team Boca Juniors and archrival River Plate.
Maradona had a different type of hepatitis in the early 1980s.
In 2004, he came close to death with heart problems associated with cocaine abuse. In 2005, he had gastric surgery to fight obesity.
Cahe has said Maradona has an addictive personality and took up alcohol as a substitute after giving up cocaine. – Reuters