UAE: Doctors perform complex, unique surgery on teen with hole in his heart

Paediatric heart surgeons at Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Khalifa Medical City (SKMC) have successfully performed a complicated heart surgery on a teenager despite facing a unique challenge.

Abdulla, a 14-year-old boy, was born with hearing loss. He had a cochlear implant – an electronic device to improve his hearing – and a few months ago, he was diagnosed with a hole in his heart.

Dr Benedict Rajkumar, consultant paediatric cardiac surgeon, noted that having a cochlear implant made performing an open-heart surgery a complicated procedure.

“Abdullah was diagnosed [with] a hole in [his] heart. But he had an association condition, which increased the challenge of doing the open-heart surgery. He was born hard-of-hearing and needed a cochlear implant to help him learn to listen and speak. Because he had a cochlear implant, we could not use a regular electrical cautery to open the chest, and we needed to find a way to do it safely,” Dr Benedict said.

A meeting was held with multi-disciplinary specialists and staff, including biomedical technicians and anaesthetists, to think of an out-of-the-box idea and perform the surgery without using standard machines.

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