Five and a half years after the death of Diego Maradona, his heart once again makes headlines in Argentina and in international media. Not for a football metaphor, but for a shocking medical information revealed during the trial that seeks to determine whether there was negligence in the care he received in his last days of life in Buenos Aires.
The news is moving because it mixes two inseparable dimensions of Maradona: the standard myth and the physical deterioration of his last years. While justice tries to reconstruct what happened on November 25, 2020, new details about his health explain why the case continues to generate global attention.
According to the autopsy findings, Diego’s heart was enlarged and weighed almost twice as much as a regular heart. Wounded, injured, he could no longer sustain the functioning of his body and led to chronic heart failure, which led to his death.
An “inordinate” heart
In the last hours, during the judicial process that is taking place in the courts of San Isidro, they met details of the autopsy and the standard condition in which the former Argentine captain died. According to newspaper reports, Maradona’s heart weighed well above the average adult hearta data love minded with chronic cardiac pathologies and with a severe picture of insufficiency.
The typical weight of an adult heart is usually between 250 and 350 grams, depending on build and sex. In the case of Maradona, experts described an enlarged and compromised organ, which reinforces the knowledge that his cardiovascular system was seriously affected.
It weighed 503 grams. And it is not an anatomical curiosity. An enlarged heart is often associated with years of hypertension, heart failure, problematic substance use, obesity, sleep apnea, or other metabolic diseases.
You can see: Maradona was sedated for 24 hours by order of his doctors, according to a witness
How was Maradona’s health really?
In his last years, Diego Maradona had multiple health problems. Different judicial and medical sources mentioned:
- Heart failure.
- Liver cirrhosis.
- Chronic kidney disease.
- Acute lung edema.
- Neurological impairment.
- History of addictions and problematic consumption.
- Sleep disorders and psychiatric medication.
A few weeks before he died, he had undergone surgery for a subdural hematoma and then transferred to home confinement in a house in the private neighborhood of San Andrés, in Tigre.
The trial that seeks answers
What today What is debated is not only whether Maradona was sick—no one disputes that—but whether he received adequate care for a patient in that state.
Seven members of his medical team are being tried for alleged easy homicide with eventual intent, a criminal figure that in Argentina implies that they could have foreseen the fatal outcome and still did not act accordingly. Among the accused are neurosurgeon Leopoldo Luque, psychiatrist Agustina Cosachov, nurses and other professionals.
The prosecution maintained at the opening of the trial that Maradona was “abandoned to his fate” and that he began to die hours before his death, without effective controls or medical response commensurate with the severity of the condition.
The defense rejects this accusation and maintains that death was a consequence of the progressive deterioration of his health.
The trial that goes around the world
The news surrounding the trial for the death of Diego Maradona They go around the world. The Argentine number 10 was not just a footballer: he was a world symbol. In Italy, Spain, Mexico and much of Latin America, any news about his life—or his death—continues to have enormous echo.
Furthermore, the case brings together universal ingredients: celebrity, medicine, addictions, family, money, professional responsibility and an uncomfortable question that many ask:could have been avoided?
The wounded man, beyond the myth
Maradona’s heart goes around the world because it represents something deeper than forensic data. It summarizes the paradox of a gigantic idol in a devastated body.
For years he carried the passions of millions. In his last days, as justice is trying to establish, he also suffered from severe illnesses and a care system that is now under suspicion.
Continue reading:
Prosecutor says Maradona was “abandoned to his fate”
More and more Latin players in the US team: those who could shine in the 2026 World Cup
Working at the 2026 World Cup in the US without permission can be expensive: fines, deportation and immigration ban
