(WAM) — Abu Dhabi-based Sheikh Shakhbout Medical City, SSMC, the UAE’s largest hospital offering serious and complex care, is now providing bariatric, thoracic and colorectal surgeries for its patients, after being designated a COVID-19-free facility by the Department of Health.

The integrated medical facility, a joint-venture partnership between Mayo Clinic and Abu Dhabi Health Services Company, SEHA, launched the three surgical specialties, as it resumes suspended healthcare services and encourages patients to proactively manage their health.

“With SSMC once again open for surgery, we are very pleased to launch these new specialty surgical services,” says Dr Matthew Gettman, Chief Medical Officer of SSMC. “Having extensively experienced surgeons offering patients minimally invasive colorectal, bariatric and thoracic surgery with faster recoveries, is a real asset for our patients. It’s one more step in SSMC’s journey to become the premier destination for medical care in Abu Dhabi and the Middle East.”

All three services are led by a multidisciplinary care team with extensive specialized expertise, who provide enhanced recoveries after surgery, ERAS, along with protocols for major surgeries using minimally invasive approaches, such as laparoscopic and robot-assisted surgeries.

ERAS is an approach that reduces a patient’s stress response to surgery, helping the patient recover more quickly and allowing safe discharge of patients from hospitals as soon as possible.

Dr Ateq Al Musabi, Deputy Chief Medical Officer and Chief of Surgery and Trauma at SSMC explained that the hospital’s surgical teams follow the latest ERAS protocols, along with evidence-based standardized best practices before, during and after surgery. “This not only enables a quick recovery for the patient,” he said, “but also reduces the risk of complications and readmission after discharge, which improves the patient’s experience dramatically.”

Using traditional practices, patients undergoing major surgery needed one to two weeks to recover. With the use of ERAS protocols, they are able to eat and drink the day after operations and can be discharged in as few as two days following surgery.

As part of SSMC’s commitment to the health and safety of patients and their families, all facilities within Sheikh Shakhbout Medical City undergo round-the-clock cleaning and sanitization, including all communal areas and surfaces, such as in waiting rooms, toilets, doorknobs and light switches, among others. Additionally, all hospital staff are regularly tested for COVID-19.