Responding to the launch of an investigation for involuntary manslaughter in legendary footballer Diego Maradona’s death, his surgeon Leopoldo Luque said he did “everything he could, up to the impossible” for an “unmanageable” patient.

Earlier in the day prosecutors in San Isidro, near Buenos Aires, said they were investigating Luque while visuals from Argentine television showed police raiding the doctor’s home.

The probe was triggered by concerns raised by Maradona’s daughters Dalma, Gianinna and Jana over the treatment he received for his heart condition at his home in Tigre, north of Buenos Aires, judicial sources said to AFP.

Maradona died of a heart attack on Wednesday aged 60. A preliminary autopsy report established that Maradona died in his sleep of “acute lung oedema and chronic heart failure”.

“Our investigations are ongoing, we are talking to witnesses, including members of the family” of Maradona, a source close to the San Isidro inquiry told AFP.

Later in the day, Luque gave an emotional televised news conference.

The 39-year-old doctor said he did “everything he could, up to the impossible” and considered himself a “friend” of Maradona and saw him “as a father, not as a patient”.

Luque had posted a photograph of himself with Maradona when the former player left hospital on November 12, eight days after the doctor operated to remove a brain blood clot. Maradona returned home to Tigre where he received round-the-clock medical care and could remain close to his daughters.

“He should have gone to a rehabilitation centre. He didn’t want to,” said Luque who called Maradona “unmanageable”.

Luque said he did not know why there was no defibrillator in case of a heart attack in Maradona’s home in Tigre, and made clear that the home care was not his responsibility.

Meanwhile, Maradona’s lawyer, Matias Morla, had called for an investigation into claims that ambulances took more than half an hour to reach the football legend’s house in response to an emergency call on the day of his death.

“A psychiatrist had asked that there should always be an ambulance in front of his house. I don’t know who is responsible for the fact that there was no ambulance,” Luque said.

As the prosecutor’s office awaits the results of toxicological tests on Maradona’s body, three prosecutors working on the case requested for his medical records, as well as recordings from neighbourhood security cameras.