Saudi surgeon performs world’s first robotic heart transplant on teen

A Saudi surgeon has performed the world’s first robotic heart transplant on a teenager in the Kingdom.

The two-and-a-half-hour surgery, led by Saudi cardiac surgeon Dr. Feras Khaliel at the Kingdom’s King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSHRC), was carried out on a 16-year-old suffering from stage four heart failure.

Implanting the robotic heart – which helps keep blood pumping around the body – involved accessing and replacing the heart without making an incision in the chest.

It was preceded by weeks of meticulous planning, the hospital – a specialized training center for robotic organ transplant surgery – said in a statement, which involved a virtual simulation of the procedure conducted seven times over three days.

It said that the robotic heart surgery represents a “significant shift in heart transplant surgery” because of the minimally invasive approach, which significantly reduces recovery time and potential complications compared to open-heart surgeries.

Last year, KFSHRC also successfully completed the world’s first fully robotic liver transplant on a 66-year-old Saudi man grappling with non-alcoholic liver cirrhosis (NASH) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Since then, four more such transplants have taken place, all involving Saudi nationals. They are the first in a long line of patients who will benefit from robotic liver transplants in the future.

Speaking to Al Arabiya English at the time, Dr. Dieter Broering, the executive director of the Organ Transplant Center at KFSHRC, said the specialty hospital has spent four decades working to put the Kingdom on the global map for organ transplantations.

He said robotic organs promise a new era of healthcare innovation, where precision and minimal invasiveness redefine what’s possible in organ transplantation.