A team of open heart surgeons at Prince Sultan Cardiac Center, King Khaled Hospital – Najran, has successfully saved a 60-year old Saudi lady with an unstable angina pectoris. She was brought to the emergency showing signs of unstable angina pectoris. Immediately, she had an exploratory catheter for her coronary arteries, which revealed tight stenosis in her left main coronary artery (LMCA).
According to the established procedure in such cases, as well as after due discussion with the patient and her families on stent treatment option and its related high risk that may require an emergency surgical intervention, or have an open-heart surgery to to connect the coronary arteries, the patient chose having a catheter, and a surgery if needed.
During stent installation, the patient's condition became unstable. Immediately, the operating room was made ready for an open-heart surgery. The whole surgical team was summoned for the surgery to connect her coronary arteries, in a rather sophisticated and high-risk operation, as the patient's condition was unstable. Thank Allah the surgery was successful. The patient was taken to ICU for further treatment. Then, she fully recovered and was discharged in good health.
The Prince Sultan Cardiac Center has a 30-bed capacity. Over the past year, 1.335 therapeutic and exploratory surgeries and 33 open-heart operations were done. Also, the Center received 14,405 outpatients.
It is worth mentioning that the Ministry of Health (MOH) is currently implementing MOH's Performance Program, which covers 70 main hospitals and aims to boost productivity, performance quality and efficiency of health services in hospitals. The program features over 40 indicators to measure the performance of seven key therapeutic aspects, including emergency, clinics, surgeries, hospitalization, ICU, radiology and labs. The program also aims to develop the skills of health professionals to use the indicators and to identify performance improvement potentials, in compliance with patient safety and quality standards.