How is the life of Leopoldo Luque: he trusts the medical board, does not regret anything and points to the pressure of the media

03/02/2021 2:24 PM

• Clarín.com

• sports

Updated 03/02/2021 2:31 PM

There is a debatable logic that Leopoldo Luque maintains: he trusts that

the social sentence will end when the judicial sentence appears.

Meanwhile, he seeks to adjust to the impossible, to lead a normal life after having been the protagonist of the end of an extraordinary story.

Diego Maradona's doctor points to the media while balancing his tranquility in the cold and complete letter of the court case and the rights and obligations that he could reach from his role.

He believes that a campaign of "psychological terrorism" is mounted against him.

He says that he does not regret anything, that he did everything in his power, that the audios that are broadcast are edited, are malicious and - most importantly - are not part of the judicial debate.

As

Clarín was

able to reconstruct

,

Luque is very confident that the medical board that begins on March 8 and seeks to determine if there was malpractice in the medical treatment that was carried out in the last days of Maradona, will agree and absolve him of all blame.

Luque, along with his wife Romina: the doctor trusts that the medical board will agree with him and he has no regrets.

Photo: EFE

For that, through their lawyers they responded to a series of questions that are reflected in the case.

There, among many other aspects, they leave evidence that the patient did not give his consent and refused to carry out many of the recommendations that the specialists made him in recent times.

And a key fact: the medical records indicate that, in life, Maradona had not detected any heart disease.

What's more, in 2020, they performed two complete medical checkups on Diego, one in April and the other in September (two months before his death) and in neither did they find any flaws in his heart.

It is worth clarifying that the autopsy determined that Maradona died as a result of "acute lung edema secondary to exacerbated chronic heart failure" and discovered a "dilated cardiomyopathy" in his heart.

Although from the defense of the doctors who accompanied the day to day of the

Diez they

emphasize that these pathologies were impossible to find with the living patient and they do not appear in any of the medical examinations that they carried out for years.

"You cannot revive a patient and treat him from the things that jump out in an autopsy and that didn't appear before," they

summarize. 

Thus they cling to ratify that it was not necessary to have more extreme care in their home in Tigre.

In addition, they clarify that to have a defibrillator, a heart monitor and an ambulance available at the door, it would have been the same if he continued to be admitted to the Olivos Clinic.

In this sense, from the institution where Diego was operated on for the subdural hematoma, they agreed together with the

Diez

family

and his closest doctors that he was now in a position to leave hospital confinement.

However, they recommended that he continue his alcohol treatment in a specialized addiction treatment facility.

There the decision of Diego himself was imposed, who cut off that chance.

And the endorsement of all his surroundings and also of the social work arrived, embodied with their signatures in the agreement for Maradona to move to a house in Tigre where he would have 24-hour assistance from nurses.

"It seems that there has to be a culprit and that Luque is already sentenced,"

say sources close to the doctor.

"The weight of the media torment is very strong, but

what really matters here is what happens in Justice, not what the media say

," they add.

Maradona's daughters declared in court that Leopoldo Luque was Diego's family doctor.

Photo: AP

There are 24 points of expertise prepared by the prosecutors for the medical board that must define whether there was malpractice.

And among these items, the questions of what was Diego Maradona's cardiological status stand out, if his doctors should know him, if he was well or badly medicated, if Tigre's house was the appropriate place for a home hospitalization and if the team to The burden of his health increased, by his actions or omissions, the risks for the unexpected outcome.

The team coordinated by the attorney general of San Isidro John Broyad, and made up of his deputies Patricio Ferrari and Cosme Iribarren, and by the prosecutor of Benavídez, Laura Capra has already notified the parties of the 24 points on which March 8 will begin to work the medical board that will be held in the Superintendency of Scientific Police of La Plata.

The

seven

health professionals charged in the case for a possible

"wrongful death"

are the neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luque (39);

the psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov (35);

the psychologist Carlos Daniel

"Charly

" Díaz (29);

the nurses Dahiana Gisela Madrid (36) and Ricardo Omar Almirón (37);

coordinating physician Nancy Forlini (52);

and the coordinator of the nurses, Mariano Perroni (40).

The story of Diego and Luque

Leopoldo Luque's last public statement was at the end of November when his home was searched.

Neurosurgeon and specialist in brain and spinal interventions, Dr. Leopoldo Luque (MN 160588) had the phone ring in 2016. A colleague friend told him that Diego Maradona was looking for a neurologist and it occurred to him that Luque and his partner Ariel Sainz, with who head the Columna Baires medical center, could be the chosen ones.

From that moment, Luque's life had a before and after.

"We couldn't believe it. 'What Diego? Diego Maradona?' We asked. Until the day we had to go see him we didn't say anything, just in case. The night before we didn't sleep, before we arrived we had to take a muscle relaxant , because we were very nervous, "he recalled.

From that moment there were four years of relationship with the ups and downs of Diego's ties and his work dynamics that made him come and go from Argentina several times.

There were stretches of deep friendship and intimate talks.

Also episodes of strong arguments and fights that almost ended in physical attacks.

"He is the most difficult patient in the world," repeated the doctors who passed near Maradona.

At the same time,

from Diego's close circle they assured that Luque was the person Maradona listened to the most.

The photo of Luque and Maradona after the operation for a bruise on the brain.

Photo: AFP

"I am very bad, because my friend died. Let it be said that I was not with him, I could not believe it," Luque told the media, in his last public statement, in the courtyard of his house, where he improvised a conference of press after the raid as part of the investigation into a possible wrongful death.

After that first meeting in 2016 in which they talked much more about football than about health issues, Maradona gave the green light for Luque to take charge of his recovery.

The neurosurgeon had the main mission of dealing with Diego's sleep disorders and coordinating an improvement in his motor problems, plagued by pain in his knees and ankles.

As part of the plan, on July 24, 2019, the world champion in Mexico 86 underwent an operation on his right knee at the Olivos Clinic in which they placed a prosthesis to relieve the pain that he had suffered for years due to a acute synovitis and osteoarthritis.

Luque was born in Lanús and lives in Adrogué with his wife and two children.

Although it is the namesake of the recently deceased former world champion striker in 1978, the doctor's relationship (a fan of Independiente) with football is limited to the amateur sphere.

“You have round feet

,

”

Diego joked when they kicked for a while in the park at Brandsen's house.

Luque received an Honorary Diploma for his studies at the University of Buenos Aires and began his career there with an ad honorem assistantship in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Faculty of Medicine.

Then he worked six years at the Barceló Foundation and since 2017 he worked at the German Hospital and El Cruce.

Since 2019 he is one of the directors of Columna Baires, an establishment that aims to solve spinal pathologies with minimally invasive interventions and rapid recovery.

JCH.