The number of transplant cases in the Kingdom increased 300 percent during 2015 in comparison with 2014, with the transplant of 778 kidneys, an increase of 24 percent, of which 634 were from live patients and 144 from brain-dead donors.

King Faisal Specialty Hospital and Research Center in Jeddah ranked first in kidney transplant surgeries, with 187 surgeries, an increase of 40 percent over the previous year. The research center in King Faisal Specialty Hospital in Riyadh came second with 181 transplants; King Fahd Specialty Hospital in Dammam came third with 131 transplants; Prince Sultan Medical Military City in Riyadh came fourth with 91 cases; and King Abdulaziz Medical City for the National Guard ranked fifth with 52 transplants.

These figures were revealed in the annual report for the Saudi Center for Organ Transplant (SCOT). The report monitored noted developments and an increase in the number of organ transplant surgeries, whether from live donors or postmortem donations.

Saudi Arabia achieved an advanced place in the field of kidney transplant by coming within the first 10 countries of donating kidneys from living people.

The Kingdom was among the pioneering countries in transplanting kidneys from the brain-dead among Arab and Asian countries.

The Kingdom also carried out 195 liver transplant surgeries in 2015. King Faisal Specialty Hospital and the Research Center in Riyadh ranked among global centers in the number of liver donations from living donors. King Faisal Specialty Hospital in Dammam and King Abdulaziz Medical City for the National Guard in Riyadh had noted activity in this field. The Kingdom comes third after South Korea and Turkey in the field of liver transplant.

The report revealed that around 20 patients benefited from lung transplants with an increase of 50 percent over 2014, and eight pancreas transplants in 2015 in comparison with two cases in 2014. The Kingdom carried out 30 heart transplant surgeries at King Faisal Specialty Hospital and Research Center in Riyadh.

Faisal bin Abdulrahim Shahin, director of SCOT, said these achievements wouldn’t have been possible without support from Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman, the honorary president of SCOT, as well as the supporting programs for organ donation and transplant and which are represented by the Prince Fahd bin Salman Charitable Society for the Welfare of Kidney Failure Patients. Other programs involved in this field include the Mohammad and Abdullah Al-Sbei program to support staff of the ICU unit, and the program to raise cooperation between ICU units in specialized hospitals and SCOT.

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