SAN ISIDRO (Argentina), June 3 — Football icon Diego Maradona should “never have been allowed” to convalesce at home after brain surgery without around-the-clock monitoring and proper medical equipment, a surgeon told the trial over the star’s death yesterday.

Maradona, regarded as one of the greatest football players of all times, died in November 2020 at age 60, while recovering at a rented home from surgery for a brain clot.

He died of heart failure and acute pulmonary edema—a condition where fluid accumulates in the lungs—two weeks after going under the knife.

Seven health-care professionals who cared for him in his last days are on trial for criminal negligence contributing to his death.

In April, the court was shown images of the 1986 World Cup star on his death bed, his stomach grotesquely distended by edema.

An autopsy showed he was in agony for several hours before his death.

One of the questions at the heart of the trial is whether the decision to allow him to convalesce in a private home instead of a medical facility endangered his life.

Rodolfo Benvenuti, a neurosurgeon who supervised Maradona’s surgery, told the court in the Buenos Aires suburb of San Isidro that he had suggested a strict protocol of home care.

“I suggested 24-hour monitoring of his vital signs, temperature, blood pressure,” Benvenuti said, adding that he had also suggested that Maradona’s medical team monitor his urine and “the presence or absence of edema.”

Benvenuti said he had also recommended that the house in the suburb of Tigre, where Maradona was taken to convalesce, be equipped with a defibrillator and pulse oximeter and that he undergo checkups “every two or three hours.”

“If all the conditions were not fulfilled in the house, home care should never have been allowed,” he said.

The court heard a voice message from a nursing supervisor who had warned Maradona’s medical team that they were “not prepared for an emergency,” noting, for example, the absence of an IV drip in the house.

Earlier in the trial, an emergency room doctor who arrived at Maradona’s home shortly after his death noted the absence of a defibrillator or oxygen in the residence.

The accused deny responsibility for Maradona’s death, saying the larger-than-life football player, who battled cocaine and alcohol addictions for years, succumbed to natural causes.

A first trial over his death was annulled last year following revelations that one of the judges took part in a clandestine documentary about the case.

The second trial, conducted by a new panel of judges, began in April. — AFP