Diego Maradona to stay in hospital, doctors say

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 14 (Reuters) Argentine soccer great Diego Maradona will remain in a Buenos Aires clinic although he has not had a repeat of the abdominal pains that led him to be hospitalized, a medical report said today.

Maradona, 46, went back to hospital yesterday, just 48 hours after being released after two weeks of treatment for alcoholic hepatitis that doctors linked to heavy drinking.

The former Argentine captain, widely seen as once one of soccer's greatest players, has suffered poor health due to cocaine addiction and obesity since retiring from the game a decade ago.

''In the course of his first 24 hours in hospital, Diego Armando Maradona has not had the symptoms that led him to be hospitalized,'' said a medical report filed by doctors at the private Los Arcos clinic.

''However, there are alterations in some laboratory test results which make it better for him to remain in hospital to control and monitor his progress,'' it added.

The report said a team of doctors including psychiatrists, nutritionists and obesity-surgery specialists were helping the soccer star, who had a stomach-stapling operation in 2005 to help him lose weight.

In photographs taken soon before his most recent hospitalization, Maradona looked overweight and was smoking cigars.

REUTERS PDS RAI2311