BOGOTA (AFP) — Argentine football legend Diego Maradona last month visited a clinic in Colombia to iron out some wrinkles and shrink his double chin, a doctor said Thursday.
Maradona arrived in Bogota on August 28 to undergo what his personal doctor, Alfredo Cahe, at the time said was aesthetic dental work.
The 46-year-old former player took advantage of his stay to also undergo other procedures and "lose a few years," Alejandro Rada, a Colombian doctor who worked on the star, said on Caracol broadcast network.
Maradona's double chin was reduced, and "we diminished the number of wrinkles on his forehead and between his eyebrows," Rada said.
"We also raised his eyebrows so that he could have an even more expressive look," Rada added.
Maradona, who already departed Colombia, did not undergo plastic surgery but rather chose unspecified "high technology treatments that have nothing to do with the scalpel," Rada said.
Regarded as one of the greatest figures in world football, Maradona played for Barcelona and Napoli, and guided Argentina to World Cup victory in Mexico in 1986 and to the 1990 final.
But his career on and off the field has been marred by repeated drug and alcohol abuse. He was hospitalized in 2000 and 2004 for heart attacks provoked by drug abuse, and again in April and May for alcohol-related problems.
An obese Maradona had his stomach stapled in March 2005 at a clinic in Cartagena, on the Colombia's Caribbean coast.
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