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Soccer player undergoes surgery on amputated leg

"I was saved because I wasn't wearing a seatbelt. If I had been wearing it, I would have remained inside the car when the post fell on top of it."

Dardo Pereira, friend of Dario Silva

Doctors took former Uruguayan international Dario Silva back into the operating room on Tuesday to clean the remaining stump of his shattered right leg, which was amputated below the knee after a weekend car accident in Montevideo.

Doctors amputated the leg of the 33-year-old forward on Monday, a day after he was thrown from his car in an automobile accident that shocked this small country. The followup operation on Tuesday was described as a routine step meant to deter infection.

Police said Silva was driving along a Montevideo highway beside the River Plate estuary on early Sunday when his vehicle struck a cement lamppost on a center divider, ejecting him and one of two other former players from the car.

Authorities said Silva hurtled through a side window, and his right leg was caught and badly broken as the 10m post toppled over the car. His two companions were not seriously injured.

Mario Cancela, who is treating Silva at the Asociacion Espanola clinic, said dirt and bits of cement were pressed into the wound of Silva's mangled right leg and what remained of the leg had to be methodically cleaned as a deterrent against any serious infection.

"It was a dirty injury," Cancela said, adding his leg was amputated just 10cm below the knee.

He added that while Silva remained in intensive care, he was no longer under heavy sedation.

Barring the onset of a severe infection, "his life is not in any danger," Cancela said, adding he would receive counseling about his amputation.

Meanwhile, authorities said an investigation was under way to determine what caused the car to jump over the center strip early on Sunday morning just before dawn. Local press reports said a judge had been assigned to the probe.

The two companions riding in the car, former players Elbio Pappa and Dardo Pereira, suffered bruising from the impact of the crash but were treated for minor injuries and released.

Pereira, 34, told local reporters none of the three were wearing seatbelts and he thinks that he was saved because he was ejected from the car before the lamppost crushed the car.

"I was saved because I wasn't wearing a seatbelt. If I had been wearing it, I would have remained inside the car when the post fell on top of it," he said.

The crash garnered front-page headlines in Uruguay, where Silva is best known for scoring 15 goals in 49 internationals, including at the 2002 World Cup. Silva began his career in Uruguay with Defensor Sporting and then Penarol, where he won three straight league titles. Then he played in Europe for Italy's Cagliari before transferring to Spain's Espanyol and Malaga.

Silva then joined Sevilla in 2003, and moved to Portsmouth, England, last year.

He was currently without a club and a free agent, and he was reportedly trying to rejoin Penarol, or archrival Nacional, local media reported.
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