Watch: Saudi-led team performs lifesaving surgery on foetus inside womb in US

Dubai: A multidisciplinary team, led by Saudi doctor Hani Najm and Dr. Darrell Cass, has successfully removed a tumour attached to the heart of a 26-week-old foetus inside his mother’s womb, in a very rare and complex lifesaving fetal surgery, Saudi media reported.

A simulation video of the surgery, which was conducted at Cleveland Clinic hospital in Ohio, United States, has gone viral on social media across Saudi Arabia with many Saudi twitter users expressing their pride on the achievement of the Saudi doctor.

The clinic posted the video months after the successful operation and birth of the baby who is in good health.

For his part, Dr. Najm tweeted: “I am happy that I was able to remove, along with the surgical team at Cleveland Clinic, a cancerous tumour from the heart of the foetus in his mother’s womb and return the foetus to the womb, to complete the pregnancy until birth,” he said.

Cleveland Clinic has become the second academic medical centre in the world to have performed this fetal surgery successfully with continued pregnancy and delivery. Sam Drinnon, the American woman, underwent fetal interventional surgery at Cleveland Clinic on May 7, 2021.

After the successful surgery, she maintained a healthy pregnancy for about 10 weeks. At 36 weeks and two days, her son, named Rylan Harrison Drinnon, was delivered by C-Section on July 13, 2021, weighing 2.83kg.