RIYADH — The Cardiac Center at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSHRC) here has become one of the five largest centers in the world in cardiac robot surgery after having performed 105 microscopic and complex heart operations in one year with the clinical robotic surgical device, according to the American Da Vinci robotics classification.

The King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Cardiology Center here has managed to extend the range of uses of robot technology in delicate and complex heart surgeries to include coronary arterial transplantation, replacement or repair of mitral or triple valves or both even if a previous operation was performed for them.

The technology is used to repair holes and congenital heart defects, in addition to removing heart tumors, and cauterizing the pulmonary veins that cause heart palpitations. The time for operations ranges between two to six hours, according to each surgical condition.

Dr. Firas Khalil, the head of the cardiac surgery department for adults at the heart center in the hospital, confirmed that performing operations using robot technology led to the ease and speed of recovery of patients between the ages of 14-80 years suffering from acute and complex heart conditions.

The heart center in the hospital completed a total of 105 surgical operations with a success rate of 98.2% during the period from 2/2019 to 2/2020 — the period that was subject to the evaluation of global centers.

Dr. Khalil indicated that the total number of operations since the start of the program in February 2019 until the end of June 2020 reached 120 operations, despite COVID-19 challenges, which reduced the number of operations relatively during the past four months compared to the previous period. — SPA