Former France and Paris-Saint-Germain defender Jean-Pierre Adams died on Monday after spending 39 years in a coma, the team said.
He was 73.
Adams was administered an incorrect dose of an anesthetic before a knee surgery in 1982, which caused brain damage and put him in a coma.
Adams’ failed surgery
Adams went in for surgery on his knee in 1982 to fix a damaged tendon. When he arrived at the hospital, however, the staff was on strike, per CNN.
“The female anesthetist was looking after eight patients, one after the other, like an assembly line,” his wife, Bernadette, told CNN in 2016. “Jean-Pierre was supervised by a trainee, who was repeating a year, who later admitted in court, ‘I was not up to the task I was entrusted with.’
“Given it was not a vital operation, that the hospital was on strike, they were missing doctors and this woman was looking after eight patients, in two different rooms, someone should have called me to say they were going to delay the operation.”
The surgery went ahead as planned, however, and several mistakes were made. Per the report, he was “badly intubated, with one tube blocking the pathway to his lungs.”
He was then placed in a coma, and was in it ever since. Bernadette cared for him for the rest of his life at their home in Nimes — which sits just off the southern coast north of Montpellier.
Adams, who was born in Dakar, Senegal in 1948, joined Entente in 1969 before landing with Nimes in 1970. He spent three seasons with Nimes, competing in 84 games and leading them to a runner-up finish in Ligue 1 in 1972. Adams then jumped to Nice for four seasons — where he competed in nearly 150 matches and scored 17 goals — before arriving at PSG in 1977.
Adams finished out his domestic career with Mulhouse and Chalon before retiring in 1981. He also made 22 appearances on the French national team throughout his career.