On 25 August 2007 Puerta collapsed and lost consciousness in the penalty area due to a cardiac arrest during Sevilla's first La Liga match of the 2007–08 at home ground Sánchez Pizjuán against Getafe CF. He was seen crouching and then subsequently collapsing upon moving back to his team's goal, after only 35 minutes of the game had passed. Teammates Ivica Dragutinović and Andrés Palop immediately ran to his side as he lost consciousness. Moments later, club medical staff and other players followed suit.
After recovering and being substituted, Puerta was able to walk to the dressing room, where he collapsed once again. He was resuscitated by the doctors and taken, by ambulance, to the intensive care unit of Virgen del Rocío hospital, where he received cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Puerta died on 28 August 2007, at 14:30. Doctor Francisco Murillo reported that Puerta had suffered multiple organ failure and irreversible brain damage as a result of multiple prolonged cardiac arrests due to an incurable, hereditary heart disease known as arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia. There is no official word on whether he had ever been equipped with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, an essential precaution in people with the disease. Puerta's premature death from heart problems is similar to those of Marc-Vivien Foé, Matt Gadsby, Miklós Fehér, Renato Curi, Serginho and Phil O'Donnell all of whom collapsed whilst playing in football matches. His girlfriend was expecting their first child at the time of his death.
As a mark of respect, players from both Sevilla and city rivals Real Betis attended his funeral days after his death. Following Puerta's death, FIFA ordered the installation of resuscitation rooms in every stadium that hosted the South American World Cup qualifiers.
Puerta was capped once by the Spanish national side, playing against Sweden on 7 October 2006: he came on as a substitute for Deportivo de La Coruña's Joan Capdevila in the 52nd minute of a 0–2 away loss for the UEFA Euro 2008 qualifiers.
Additionally, Puerta played five times for the U-21s.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; Wikipedia.
|