Successful open-heart surgery conducted in Dubai

Dubai In a rare surgical procedure conducted by a team of surgeons from the Cardio Thoracic department of the Saudi German Hospital on December 16, doctors replaced the entire ascending aortic valve and the aortic arch of a 63-year-old expatriate in the UAE, Nabgha Al Jabri. The cardiothoracic unit of the hospital’s team of 14 medical personnel conducted the Bentall’s procedure on Al Jabri and gave him a new lease of life.

The patient had severe calcification of his aortic valve, which caused it to narrow with inefficiency of blood flow to the valve of the fourth-degree.

He also suffers from hypertension, which increases the possibility of complications during surgery or post-surgery.

Usually, the risk rate in such procedures is placed at 25 per cent and the death rate at 10 per cent.

Explaining the intricacies of the eight-hour open-heart surgery, the hospital’s lead surgeon told Gulf News: “Bentall’s procedure, although conducted in the UAE, is a rare surgery and is carried out in patients who have aortic valve or ascending aorta disorder. Usually it is carried out in younger patients who are less than 50 years of age. I have earlier conducted this procedure in patients between 17-34 years of age.”

The surgeon added that the case was very challenging due to the heavy calcification of the aortic valve. ”Owing to a long history of diabetes and hypertension, the patient had a very high grade of calcification which made the valve very brittle. It also made the valve very fragile and did not give us the liberty to put sutures where we wanted. There was insufficiency of aortic route and there was a high risk of bleeding and neurological complications. However, our team of 14 doctors and nurses were able to achieve 100 per cent success. We were able to successfully replace the diseased aortic valve and arch with a new graft and re-implant the coronary arteries into the graft.”

Al Jabri, who was in hospital for eight days after the surgery, has recovered completely and has had a good quality of life for the past week since the surgery.

What is the Bentall’s procedure?

This is an international medical procedure conducted on patients with aortic valve disease. In this procedure, a composite Dacron graft is used to replace the diseased aortic valve, the aortic root and ascending valve and the coronary arteries are reimplanted into the new graft to resume normal heart function.