HMC Neurosurgery Department Successfully Performs More Than 1,000 Surgeries in 2021

HMC Qatar

Hamad Medical Corporation's (HMC) Neurosurgery Department has achieved several successive developments over the past three years in terms of the types and numbers of surgeries it performs every year.

For the first time since its establishment, HMC's Neurosurgery Department performed more than 1,000 neurosurgeries in one year (2021), which is considered as a huge leap in surgical activity in this specialty. The surgeries included 177 brain surgeries to remove tumors, more than 300 spinal surgeries, as well as other surgical procedures to treat cases with strokes, traumatic brain injuries, cerebrovascular diseases, and other neurosurgical conditions.

Dr. Abdulla Al Ansari, Chief Medical Officer and Chairman of Surgery at HMC said that HMC continues its development journey with many remarkable achievements and milestones reached so far, such as the opening of new facilities and implementing quality improvement plans and programs to ensure the delivery of best healthcare services to patients and to meet the increasing demand for healthcare services from the rapidly growing population in Qatar.

"Surgical services at HMC meet the best international standards in terms of patient safety and the surgical technology used by our surgeons. HMC is committed to enhancing the surgical infrastructure in all its departments and specialties and to providing innovative services and technologies to enhance surgical capacity and capabilities across all its hospitals, as well as to providing the best and most advanced surgical services available to Qatar's population," he added in a statement on Monday.

Dr. Sirajeddin Belkhair, Senior Consultant and Head of the Neurosurgery Department at HMC said that the strategy of the Neurosurgery Department over the past few years has been focused on achieving several objectives, such as improving the quality of neurosurgical care at HMC and enhancing the confidence of the local community in the quality of treatment services provided at HMC so that patients opt to seek neurosurgery services locally instead of to seek treatment abroad.

Dr. Belkhair indicated that highlighted the department's success in performing a number of highly-complex surgeries for the first time in Qatar over the past months, including more than 10 brain tumor surgeries performed on awake patients, four brain surgeries for epilepsy with intra operative electroencephalography brain mapping, and a brain bypass surgery on a patient with Moyamoya Disease as part of the Brain Re-Vascularization Program, which was introduced three years ago. HMC is currently the only healthcare provider in the region to offer this surgery, which is a last-resort treatment for patients suffering from Moyamoya disease. All these surgeries demonstrate HMC's excellence in the delivery of surgical services.

HMC's Neurosurgery Residency Program achieved accreditation from the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education - International (ACGME-I) in July 2021, which demonstrates excellence in the way medical graduates are trained through residency, internship, and fellowship programs.