CARTAGENA, Colombia, March 3 - Former Argentina
World Cup-winning captain Diego Maradona may have his stomach
stapled to reduce his ballooning waistline, a Colombian doctor
said on Thursday.
Maradona, 44, is deciding whether to have surgery in the
picturesque port city of Cartagena on Colombia's Caribbean
coast.
"I think he'll decide whether to do it or not within a
couple of days," Francisco Holguin, head of Cartagena's Medihelp
clinic, told Reuters.
Maradona only stopped playing professionally in 1997 but has
grown almost unrecognisably fat in recent years despite spending
much of his time in a Cuban clinic fighting cocaine addition.
Maradona returned to Cartagena this week after visiting in
mid-February when he denied rumours he was planning liposuction.
Stomach stapling, also known as a gastric bypass, reduces
the stomach's capacity for holding food and bypasses part of the
small intestine, forcing individuals to eat less.
"Diego Maradona is in good shape. At first we saw him to
adjust the dosage of medication he's taking for high blood
pressure, but that's now at normal levels," Holguin said.
Maradona spent more than a week in the intensive care unit
of a Buenos Aires hospital last April with heart and breathing
problems. He was then confined to a psychiatric clinic by his
family.
In September, Maradona returned to Cuba, where he has lived
since 2000, to undergo more treatment for drug addiction but
under a stricter regime than before.