King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre (KFSHRC) in Riyadh has transplanted a heart into a seven-year-old Saudi child using an organ transported from a brain-dead donor in Abu Dhabi, UAE, marking another successful case of advanced regional cooperation in organ transplantation.
The life-saving procedure, said a KFSHRC press release issued today, was completed following donor family consent and all regulatory approvals, and after coordination between the Saudi centre for Organ Transplantation and the UAE's National programme for Donation and Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissue (HAYAT).
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.
According to the release, time is a critical factor in heart transplant operations. As per 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 heart transplant was more than just a medical procedure—it was the result of ongoing coordination between medical teams in the Kingdom and the UAE through humanitarian cooperation aimed at saving critical cases. This achievement, added the release, reflects KFSHRC's ability to overcome complex challenges and leverage its capabilities in partnership with relevant authorities to deliver specialised care that brings hope back to patients and their families.
The KFSHRC Heart Centre is recognised 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.
KFSHRC has been ranked first in the Middle East and North Africa and 15th globally in the list of the world’s top 250 Academic Medical centres for the second consecutive year and has been recognised as the most valuable healthcare brand in the Kingdom and the Middle East, according to the 2024 Brand Finance rankings. It was included in the world's best 250 hospitals and the World’s Best Smart Hospitals list for 2025 by Newsweek magazine.
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