Neurosurgeons and psychiatrists at a Madinah-based hospital in Saudi Arabia are claiming that they have helped in minimizing the pain of a patient suffering from chronic depression for the last 25 years. Multiple reports from Saudi Arabia are saying that the patient successfully underwent surgery that has helped alleviate acute depression symptoms. 

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The medical team at the Saudi medical facility discussed the case in detail and decided that surgical intervention can be done on the patient in order to help alleviate the chronic depression symptoms and the anxiety that comes with it.

Reports say that the patient’s superior frontal gyrus was incised from both ends while the patient was under general anesthesia. They claim that the procedure succeeded without creating any complications for the patient. 

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They further claim that the patient’s pre-surgery symptoms have gotten better and his mental state and mood have improved, sleep hours have gone back to normal and he is having fewer suicidal thoughts. His anxiety about the future has also come down to a great extent and he feels less unhappy.

However, this surgery has not been yet been performed anywhere else in the world and no other sources except in Saudi Arabia have reported about it. The hospital has claimed that the “one of a kind” operation was performed at the Saudi facility.

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For surgery to be approved, the process has to withstand the test of Randomised Clinical Trials (RCTs). Only if the surgical process is approved through RCTs, it can be performed on patients more generally. 

The reports that talk about the surgery have not cited any reports based on clinical trials. Whether the claims of the Saudi doctors can stand an RCT will be the next big question to ask.