Sharjah: A doctor who performed a heart operation live via webcast in Sharjah on Thursday praised the procedure as a “major breakthrough for the Middle East region.”
Al Qassimi Hospital broadcast two interactive live surgeries to train and educate new physicians from around the world. The complex surgery was aired live via webcast to the 10th annual Complex Cardiovascular Catheter Therapeutics conference in Orlando, Florida.
Around 3,000 surgeons from around the world viewed the surgeries underway at Al Qassimi Hospital.
Additionally, surgeons in Florida viewed the procedures and provided their comments on each step.
While Dr Arif Al Nooryani, Executive Director and Consultant Cardiologist at the hospital, carried out a critical procedure called Amplea at Al Qassimi Hospital in Sharjah, his audience comments rang out over a speaker in the cardiac catheterisation lab’s operation room.
Al Nooryani told Gulf News that the “operation has been a great success. We need to follow up with the patient to make sure that everything is still ok. He suffered from weak heart and blockages. A pump was implanted and it was conducted at drop pressure but the result was excellent.”
Al Nooryani said that surgery cost is usually Dh160,000 but it was conducted free for the patient who has undergone three surgeries in five years.
“The heart of the patient pumped only 27 per cent of blood before the surgery and after the surgery we expect that his heart will pump 40 per cent at least and it will pump 5 liters of blood per minute,” he said
“This operation is a breakthrough for the region; we have taken the opportunity to show the conference that we [in the Middle East] are not inferior to others. We have showed that in the Arab world there are doctors performing the same operations as in Europe and North America and maybe even doing them better. This has put Sharjah, the UAE and the whole Middle East in an exclusive club.”
Dr Al Nooryani said the technology delivers high-resolution video and real-time two-way experiences through global network and it facilities surgical education through live interactive surgery video broadcasting and to learn and communicate in real-time directly with the surgeon and those in the operating room.
“The aim of the surgery is to allows us to provide invaluable training to new physicians and other healthcare professionals from around the globe,” Dr Al Nooryani said
We are very pleased to have this technology available at Al Qassimi Hospital to aid us in training and to take part in global conferences,” he said.
Dr Al Nooryani spent the next few hours fielding congratulatory calls from Florida.
“The conference organisers came to us because they trust our work and have seen the results,” he said, adding that very few cardiologists worldwide favour stenting for this kind of problem. “Medicine is constantly evolving. We have new equipment, new materials, new procedures that we as cardiologists need to learn. Through this live transmission, I was given the opportunity to teach these cardiologists how to do this by showing them that it can easily be done and giving them encouragement.”
