The Cardiac Center at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSHRC) has become one of the five largest centers in the world performing cardiac robot surgery after having conducted 105 microscopic and complex heart operations in one year with the clinical robotic surgical device.
According to the American Da Vinci robotics classifications and the partnering firm responsible of training surgeons on critical surgeries, the evaluation period extending from February 2019 to February 2020 showed that KFSHRC is a competitor for the leading centers in cardiac surgeries in the US.
The clinical robotic surgical device is composed of an arm equipped with a camera in addition to other arms equipped with surgery tools that can be controlled by a surgeon sitting in front of a screen connected to a computer fixed near the surgery table. The control unit provides surgeons with a three dimensional high-resolution display of the surgery site.
The King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Cardiology Center 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 also 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 eased and accelerated the recovery of patients between the ages of 14-80 years who were 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%.
