A seven-year-old Saudi child's was saved after a brain-dead donor in Abu Dhabi donated an organ.

The medical team at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre (KFSHRC) in Riyadh performed the transplant 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.

Due to medical complications and a shortage of time, the organ was flown to Riyadh after extraction. The procedure was carried out 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,” it said.

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According to a statement issued by the KFSHRC, time is a critical factor in heart transplant operations. 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 organ was donated through 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 consent of the donor's family and all regulatory approvals in place.

The Saudi hospital delivered 293,381 virtual consultations in 2024 - a 58.2 per cent year-on-year increase. It also successfully performed the world's first implantation of two artificial pumps for biventricular support (BiVAD-HMIII) using robotic technology on a patient with advanced heart failure.

This groundbreaking procedure opens new horizons in circulatory support techniques for patients with complex cardiac conditions and marks a medical achievement that culminated in the patient's recovery within a short period following the surgery.

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