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A surgery was performed for a nine-year-old child, who was waiting for 5 years

 The medical teams specialized in organ transplantations in King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre in Riyadh managed to perform seven exchange renal transplantations between seven different families simultaneously within forty-eight hours. This matter required the preparation of five operating rooms along with the participation of 45 consultant physicians specialized in kidney transplantation and surgery, anesthesia and nursing to participate in a procedure that is considered the first of its kind at the level of medical centers internationally.

His Excellency Dr. Qasim Al-Qasabi, Chief Executive Officer of King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre (KFSH&RC) emphasized that such concurrent surgeries, which were efficiently and unprecedentedly performed, reflect the availability of qualified personnel and technical capabilities which allowed the preparation of five operating rooms simultaneously. This matter contributed to the accommodation of 14 persons of donors and patients who are suffering from renal failure. It is an extension of the success of organ transplantation program at the main hospital in Riyadh and its branch in Jeddah. The medical teams were able to carry out 1290 transplant surgeries over the last year in integrated programs for cardiac, lung, liver, bone marrow, stem cells, kidney, pancreas and bone transplantation.

This new international excellence adds to the excellence of KFSH&RC in leading globally a number of organ transplantation programs, including the presence of the hospital at the forefront in the number of kidney transplantation cases for children annually during the past years. The last one was performing 38 kidney transplant surgeries for children in Riyadh in 2016, with age ranging from two to fourteen years, which is one of the highest rates in transplantation globally to be performed by a single medical center within a year for this age group with the achievement of excellent success, Dr. Al-Qasabi pointed out.

On the other hand, Dr. Ibrahim Al Ahmadi, Chairman of Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Surgery, explained that the huge number of exchange renal transplant surgeries recently performed is unprecedented in a single medical center worldwide, according to the official records of the pioneers of the Renal Transplant Exchange Program in the United States of America.

“One of these surgeries was conducted on a nine-year-old girl, who was on the waiting list for five years, hoping to obtain a kidney from a donor with a dead brain, in addition to six other adult patients of both sexes ranging in age from 42 to 63 years, and all of them have no identical relative donor, Dr. Al Ahmadi noted.

Moreover, Dr. Al Ahmadi added that the matching process is done through a globally certified special computer software that processes the data of patients and donors whereby each patient gets the matching kidney.

Dr. Al Ahmadi has also emphasized the importance of non-relative Renal Transplant Exchange Program, which was established in KFSH&RC in 2011 and offered patients an opportunity to receive a matching kidney from a non-related donor in the absence of a matching related donor in a timely manner, which is a program of solidarity nature, instead of being put on the brain-dead organ donation waiting list.

Dr. Al Ahmadi stated that the total number of Renal Transplant Exchange Program reached 51 transplant surgeries since the program was established in 2011 till 15^th of April 2017, and included two families, three families, four families, five families and finally seven families. Moreover, the total number of kidney transplantation cases of all types since the establishment of the program in KFSH&RC in Riyadh in 1981 and up to mid-April 2017, reached 2949 cases for males and females of different age groups.