DOHA: Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) announced the start of the expansion of the Heart Hospital by performing robotic coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgeries, noting that this step aims to improve the natural blood flow to the heart muscle (Robotic CABG), a modern surgical technique that is a less invasive alternative to traditional surgeries and more accurate, allowing patients to recover faster and less prone to complications.
The Corporation explained in a statement that this advanced surgery is being performed under the supervision of a specialized surgical team that includes Dr Abdul Wahid Al Mulla, Senior Consultant and Head of Cardiothoracic Surgery Department at the Heart Hospital of Hamad Medical Corporation, Dr Ali Kandawi, Consultant Cardiac Surgeon, Dr Mohammed Latif Wani, Consultant Cardiac Surgeon, and Dr Mohammed Al Kahlout, Cardiac Surgery Specialist in the Cardiothoracic Surgery Department.
In turn, Dr Abdul Wahid Al Mulla said that the Heart Hospital has introduced limited interventional surgeries for two types of operations, namely coronary artery surgeries and mitral valve surgeries, in an effort to keep pace with surgical developments and provide high-quality health services to patients in the State of Qatar, in line with Hamad Medical Corporation’s Healthcare Strategy 2024-2030, the National Health Strategy 2024-2030, and Qatar National Vision 2030.
Dr Al Mulla added that using robots in heart surgeries brings about a radical change in the patient’s experience, as it contributes significantly to reducing the patient’s feeling of pain during surgery and returning to his normal life in a shorter time, in addition to reducing complications resulting from wounds such as bleeding and infections.
He explained that patients are carefully and accurately selected based on their health condition and suitability for this type of surgery, which ensures achieving the best results.
For his part, Dr Muhammad Al Kahlout confirmed that this type of surgery depends on making a small incision no longer than 6 cm in length on the left side of the chest, as an alternative to performing the operation using traditional methods that require making a longitudinal incision in the middle of the chest.
He explained that the medical team is committed to following all the basic steps of the procedure, such as placing the patient on a heart-lung machine and stopping the heart to ensure that the surgery is performed with high efficiency, adding that the use of robots in heart surgeries contributes to reducing the recovery period from the operation and the hospital stay by a third compared to open-heart surgeries.
He pointed out that the year 2024 witnessed an increase in the number of cases in which more than one connection was performed, to about 10 cases, hoping that the number will reach 25 cases by 2025, noting that this procedure is very advanced, as it is performed by only a few specialized medical centers around the world, which enhances the position of the Heart Hospital at Hamad Medical Corporation as an advanced medical facility in the field of heart and chest surgeries.
It is worth noting that the Heart Hospital of Hamad Medical Corporation began performing arterial surgeries on a small scale about 15 years ago, when they were limited at that time to patients who needed a single arterial connection. However, with the development of surgical techniques, it has recently become possible, specifically at the beginning of this year, to use this technique to perform it on more than one artery.
