A team of pediatric cardiac surgeons at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSHRC) performed consecutive heart transplants on two children, one of them an eight-month-old, within 24 hours in Riyadh. Before the surgery, the two girls used temporary artificial pumps.
The team traveled to Makkah to remove the heart of a deceased donor, which was then transported and transplanted in the 19-month-old patient, managing to overcome all the logistic obstacles with the help of the Saudi Ministry of Defense’s aeromedical evacuation team.
The KFSHRC’s surgical team also traveled to Dubai to perform heart removal surgery on a deceased donor within 24 hours. The heart was then transplanted in a young Emirati girl who’s almost eight months old, after completing all the regulative procedures including the approval of the donor’s family. The Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation, the UAE’s National Center for Regulating Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissue, and the Saudi Ministry of Defense’s aeromedical evacuation team played instrumental roles in facilitating the travel.
The Emirati child is the youngest case to have undergone this surgery. The previous youngest case was an eleven-month-old girl that underwent a transplant last year.
The surgeries of the two girls were performed in KFSHRC, Riyadh. Such surgeries require highly experienced human cadres, and an advanced medical infrastructure that is available at KFSHRC, as well as a logistic support that facilitates the travel of the medical team in a record time, and in these cases, it was provided by the Saudi Ministry of Defense’s aeromedical evacuation team.
The two girls are improving after they underwent the heart transplant surgery, and currently undergoing periodic medical follow-up. Before the surgery, they suffered from a severe heart failure, which required the deployment of temporary artificial pumps until donors were found.
The heart transplant program for children and adults at KFSHRC is the largest in the Middle East with surgeries comparable to global numbers in the heart transplant field. Since the establishment of the program in 1989, KFSHRC has conducted over 431 heart transplants surgeries.
