The Hamad Medical Corporation’s (HMC) Heart Hospital has last year handled a total of 390 cases, including some 263 cardiac surgical cases and 127 thoracic surgical procedures, the hospital’s first annual Cardiothoracic Surgical department report states.
The report also reveals that 84% of the cases treated by the unit included male patients and 16% involving female patients, while their average age was 55 years.
The publication, published by the cardiothoracic surgery team, openly discusses operative complications in line with medical practice in Western developed countries, demonstrating the hospital’s and the Corporation’s commitment to perform thorough reviews of all medical care practices.
The Cardiothoracic Surgery department has four consultant cardiac surgeons and two consultant thoracic surgeons.
The Heart Hospital’s inpatient section includes a 12-bed ward and seven Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds for cardiothoracic surgery.
According to the new report, Video Assisted Thorascopic Surgery (VATS) was used in around 40% of the operations performed by the team.
VATS is a type of thoracic surgery performed using a small video camera that is introduced into the patient’s chest via a scope.
The surgeon is able to view the instruments that are being used along with the anatomy on which the surgeon is operating.
The use of VATS, which is a form of surgery on par with international standards and being used in around 35% of cases in the UK, reduced infection rates and helps with a faster recovery time.
“The Cardiothoracic Surgery department of Hamad Medical Corporation is based at the Heart Hospital, which opened in September 2011,” Heart Hospital Cardiothoracic Surgery chair Dr Abdulaziz al-Khoulaifi mentioned adding: “This is where both adult cardiac and thoracic surgical cases are performed. This annual report is an important step towards informing the public and the wider medical community about our work and achievements.”
To date according to the report, a total of 36 robot assisted coronary artery bypass surgery, which started at Hamad General Hospital in 2009, have been performed while two cases of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) programme that started at the Heart Hospital in October last year have been successfully performed and the programme is recruiting more patients for the procedure.
Furthermore, the report also summarised the important post-operative outcomes of patients who have undergone open heart surgery.  
An important aspect of the report is the consistent implementation of a risk scoring/stratification model that assesses the risk of any open heart procedure in adults.  
The model is called the Euroscore and is the most robust risk stratification model in use worldwide.
It forms the basis on which patients are assessed and treated before, during and after open heart surgery.
Heart Hospital chief executive officer Dr Lionel Jarvis said: “This report gives us a chance to reflect on the great work done by the team in the previous year, our first full year of operation at Heart Hospital, as well as allow us to look at areas to focus on in the years ahead.”






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