Equally important to our mission is the implementation for an exhaustive plan for the management of acute and chronic pain for all our patients.

As well as the Department of Anesthesia being involved in a training and development program which trains staff in all aspects from administration to anesthesia technicians, the department also has a residency training program which is responsible for training excellent anesthetists within Riyadh and Saudi Arabia in addition to training fellows on sub-specialty in Pediatric and Cardiac Anesthesia.

These goals will be achieved through the recruitment of the most qualified staff, the continuous education of all staff, medical research and audit of our practice, utilization of the most current of medical technology, and planning.

Divisions and Staff:

• Pediatric Anesthesia:

Provides anesthesia care for neonates, infants and children up to the age of 14 years, for surgical and non-surgical procedures. The division provides 24 hours emergency coverage only as back-up support to the on-call anesthesiologist in the main OR in cases of neonatal emergencies or very sick small children. The pediatric anesthesiologist does not reside in-house, and will come to the hospital only if called by the in-house consultant anesthesiologist. The pediatric anesthesiologist also provides other clinical services upon request from the Pediatric ICU or the Pediatric ER, mainly for insertion of central lines or to manage difficult intubation.

• Hepatobiliary & Liver Transplant Anesthesia:

Provides anesthesia care for patients undergoing cadaveric or living-related liver transplant. It also covers major Hepatobiliary surgery. There are two consultants (or one consultant and one associate consultant) on-call on 24/7 basis. In addition, another separate anesthesia team is on-call 24/7 for kidney transplant.

• Pain clinic:

Pain clinic is a health care facility that focuses on the diagnosis and management of pain Our Pain Management Division offers a range of services for patients with acute or chronic pain.

Acute Pain Service (APS) offers adequate consultations for adult and pediatric inpatients. The patients of this service are either post-surgical, sickle cell disease, or other painful conditions caused by trauma. APS care includes intravenous patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) Epidural Analgesia and Peripheral Nerve Catheter.

Chronic Pain Clinic provides outpatient evaluation and pain management services, at clinic 303, for patients experiencing chronic and longstanding pain. The clinic tackles the treatment of various conditions some of which are; Low back pain, Neck pain, Headache, Sickle cell disease, Sciatica, Osteoarthritis, Fibromyalgia, and Cancer. Therapy plan is adjusted upon patients’ specific needs, circumstances, and preferences. However, to achieve successful long-term management of pain requires a Multidisciplinary Approach which incorporates a range of specialties treatments such like; Pharmacotherapy, Psychology, Physiotherapy, and Interventional Procedures e.g.; Trigger Point Injection and Nerve Block.

• Obstetric Anesthesia:

Is not yet officially constructed, however, a group of anesthesiologists are assigned to obstetric anesthesia and one candidate is identified as “In-Charge” of the service. Hopefully when the manpower and space requirements become available, the division will officially be launched. At this point of time we provide anesthesia coverage by a consultant and a junior anesthetist (resident/staff physician/assistant consultant) during working hours. After working hours, one consultant covers both the Main OR and the obstetric ward. We aim at providing separate consultant coverage during the night for this important area. The division provides anesthesia care for c-sections and other obstetric procedures in addition to epidural analgesia for labor pain.

Statistical Data

Our department has also achieved excellence in its clinical services in all areas of anesthesia care.