Man donates organs to five patients in Saudi Arabia

Jakarta (Indonesia Window) – A 24-year-old patient, who was declared brain dead after a car accident, saved the lives of five other patients after his family agreed to donate his vital organs for transplants at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSHRC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The five patients, who suffer from organ failure, separately received the man’s small bowel, liver, heart and kidney during simultaneous operations which took 10 hours, according to Arab News.

Expert surgeons at a Riyadh hospital worked side by side in the last month with those from various hospital’s departments to perform the procedure.

“These sophisticated surgeries can be only achieved, simultaneously, in a few advanced medical centers around the world, as they require a highly qualified and expert medical teams with a well-equipped infrastructure that includes modern operating rooms, lab, radiology and other specialized medical equipment,” KFSHRC chief Dr. Majid Al Fayyadh said.

Al-Fayyadh added surgical teams worked all night to retrieve the organs from the donor, while a different set of experts worked on transplanting them to the five patients.

The five patients were two women aged 36 years and 60 years; two men aged 34 years and 63 years; and a baby aged 23 months old.

The hospital is known for being one of the few medical centers in the world that performs small bowel transplants, Al-Fayyadh said.

The medical teams in KFSHRC confirmed all five patients were in good health and most of them have been discharged to recuperate.

Reporting by Indonesia Window