In a story of hope across borders, a 9-year-old girl in Saudi was given another chance at life after getting a heart from a brain-dead donor residing in the UAE.
The case is one of three transplants that were performed at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in under 24 hours. The living hearts were transferred from Abu Dhabi, Jeddah and Riyadh to the three patients in Riyadh who suffered from heart muscle weakness and failure.
The fast-paced nature of the surgeries deemed them extraordinary, as doctors raced against time to give new hearts to these three patients. For a successful surgery to take place, ideally the period between removing the heart from the donor and transplanting it to the patient should not exceed five hours.
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New chance at life
The 9-year-old girl who was suffering from a weak heart muscle, had previously fought death, after which an artificial pump was placed in March 2023. Despite the surgery, she remained hospitalised as her heart couldn’t rely solely on the pump.
She had to wait until a donor was available. A matching donor was finally found as a result of the coordination between the Saudi Centre for Organ Transplantation and the National Program for Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues (Hayat) in the UAE.
A special team from Riyadh first travelled to Abu Dhabi by air, where they carried out a heart removal surgery from the brain-dead patient who was admitted at Abu Dhabi’s Cleveland Hospital.
The heart was then airlifted to Saudi’s airport via a private flight and transported to the hospital, where the successful surgery took place. The young girl is currently under observation and going through medical follow ups.
The second case was of a 40-year-old man who was given a heart from a brain-dead patient in Jeddah, all within 24 hours. The hospital’s medical team moved to Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz Medical City to conduct the heart removal surgery and transport it back to Riyadh, where the successful heart transplant took place.
The third patient who was part of the surgeries was a 41-year-old man who had suffered from a fourth-degree heart failure. An artificial pump had been implanted in him in 2023. The man got a new lease at life after a brain-dead donor was matched at King Abdulaziz Medical City in Riyadh.
The patient is currently undergoing medical follow-up post the transplant.