JEDDAH: A highly specialized medical and surgical team of 25 doctors from various specialties successfully performed the first liver transplant surgery at the Saudi German Hospital here recently.
Dr. Khalid Batterjee, vice president of the hospital, said the surgery was conducted after receiving approval from the Saudi Council for Organ transplantation, and under their supervision, with full success as the donor and recipient are both healthy and fine.
Dr. Amro Abdela’al, a liver transplant specialist at the hospital, said this is the first time such a complicated surgery has been performed at the hospital in Jeddah and is proof of the medical progress in the Kingdom.
The liver transplant surgery was performed on a 32-year-old Yemeni patient who was suffering from liver, abdominal and body pain for the past several years.
Abdela’al said the patient’s 30-year-old younger brother donated part of the right lobe of his liver to save his brother’s life. The surgery was carried out with the help of extensively experienced doctors who successfully attached part of the healthy liver with arteries, veins and bile duct in the patient.
He said the 10-hour surgery was a major success in this regard. The patient was in intensive care for four days, but has now been transferred to the normal ward.
In living-donor liver transplants, surgeons remove a portion of the donor’s liver. Another surgical team then removes the recipient’s entire diseased liver and replaces it with a portion of the living donor’s healthy liver. The livers of the donor and the recipient grow to their full size within a few weeks.
The Yemeni patient who wanted to remain anonymous after the successful surgery, thanked the Kingdom and the kind leadership for all humanitarian and medical support they are providing to Yemeni nationals and others.
First liver transplant in Jeddah successful
First liver transplant in Jeddah successful
Saudi Arabia welcomes ceasefire agreement between Syrian Democratic Forces and Syria state
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has welcomed an agreement between the Syrian state and Syrian Democratic Forces.
In a foreign ministry statement early on Monday, the Kingdom said it had welcomed an deal between Damascus and Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces that was announced by the Syrian government on Sunday.
The agreement entails merging all SDF forces into the defense and interior ministries and means that Kurdish forces will redeploy to east of the Euphrates river.
The 14-point deal would also see the immediate administrative and military handover of Deir Ezzor and Raqqa governorates.
The Syrian state would regain control of all border crossings, oil fields, and gas fields in the region, with protection secured by regular forces to ensure the return of resources to the Syrian government, while considering the special case of Kurdish areas, the state news agency SANA reported.
The ceasefire comes after intense fighting between the SDF and government troops in Aleppo. But SDF troops have now pulled back from there and the Syrian army now controls most areas east of Aleppo.
The Saudi foreign ministry statement also thanked the US for the agreement. Washington is believed to have supported brokering the ceasefire between allies SDF and the Syrian government, who they have also backed diplomatically since the fall of long-time dictator Bashar Assad.
The Syrian state announced on Friday a raft of new directives to recognize Syrian Kurds, including making their language official and bolstering other rights for the minority group.
