Saudi and UAE Collaboration Saves Life of 7-Year-Old Through Cross-Border Heart Transplant
The operation relied on precise coordination from organ extraction to air transport and rapid surgery preparation in Riyadh.
King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre (KFSHRC) in Riyadh has successfully performed a life-saving heart transplant on a 7-year-old Saudi child using an organ donated by a brain-dead donor in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
The complex procedure was made possible through seamless cross-border cooperation between the Saudi Centre for Organ Transplantation and the UAE’s National Program for Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissue (HAYAT), with full consent from the donor’s family and all regulatory approvals in place.
This cooperation involved precise medical and logistical coordination, starting with the organ extraction, followed by air transportation to Riyadh, and concluding with the preparation of operating theatres in record time. The transplantation was performed within a critically time-sensitive window, ultimately saving the life of a child who had no other treatment options available.
The medical team at KFSHRC performed the transplantation on the child, who was suffering from advanced heart failure due to a complex congenital heart defect. After exhausting all available treatment options—including medications, respiratory support, and pacemaker implantation—without any significant improvement, the child was placed on the urgent transplant list.
Time is a critical factor in heart transplant operations. According to medical standards, the period between removing the heart from the donor and transplanting it into the patient must not exceed five hours to ensure transplant success. This time constraint creates significant logistical challenges in addition to the complex medical procedures, particularly when the brain-dead donor is located in another region within the Kingdom or overseas. In such circumstances, every minute of delay becomes crucial to the operation’s success.
The KFSHRC Heart Centre is recognized as one of the world’s leading cardiac centres, having achieved exceptional milestones including the world’s first fully robotic heart transplant and robotic artificial heart pump implantation without chest incision. These unprecedented medical breakthroughs demonstrate the Kingdom’s leadership in complex cardiac surgery.
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