The Sultan Qaboos Center for Cancer Treatment and Research launched the ‘Liver Surgery Registry’ – a liver surgery operation database that includes several local and Gulf Medical Centers.

This makes it the first of its kind in the Sultanate of Oman and the Gulf region.

Dr Abdullah bin Yahya al-Farai, a consultant in the liver, biliary and pancreatic tumours surgery at the centre, said: “The liver surgery registry came to collect patients’ data in a progressive and organised manner with the aim of obtaining a database that will be used later in many scientific studies.”

He added: “The idea of ​​the record came from the fact that the number of cases of liver surgeries in most hospitals in the region is relatively few and their collection in a unified record gives us more information,” noting that “this multiplicity of information has greater scientific strength for research compared to information from one medical centre.”

He stated that the registry includes, in its initial stage, five medical centres: Sultan Qaboos Integrated Center for Cancer Treatment and Research, Sultan Qaboos University Hospital, Armed Forces Hospital, Cleveland Clinic Center in Abu Dhabi and Sheikh Shakhbout Medical City – Mayo Clinic – in Abu Dhabi.

He indicated that in addition to contributing to research and scientific papers, the registry aims to use the findings from those studies to improve patient care.

He explained that the registry has an administrative and scientific committee to follow up on the progress of the process of receiving and storing information, and to study requests received for the use of information for scientific studies.

The committee currently consists of four members from the Sultanate of Oman, the United Arab Emirates and the Republic of France.

Dr Abdullah bin Yahya Al-Fari confirmed that the process of collecting patient information will be carried out confidentially to ensure that information that may lead to knowledge of the patient’s identity is not shared, as entering the patient’s information in the registry is only done after obtaining his consent.

*This story was originally published by Oman News Agency