Dr. Salim Al Maskari

Dr. Salim is a Senior Consultant in Paediatric Interventional Cardiology at Muscat Private Hospital, with more than 21 years in the diagnosis and treatment of heart conditions that children are born with or develop in childhood.

Dr. Salim helped build paediatric cardiology in Oman, establishing a comprehensive service and introducing catheter-based treatment of structural heart defects in children procedures that in many cases avoid or postpone open-heart surgery. His practice runs from fetal life through to adulthood, and he continues to look after adults born with heart defects, a group who need lifelong specialist follow-up and who often lose track of it after childhood.

He works across both diagnosis and treatment: echocardiography, including fetal and transoesophageal studies, electrocardiography and cardiac CT on the diagnostic side, and diagnostic and interventional cardiac catheterisation on the other. His experience covers straightforward defects and complex ones, and he works closely with cardiac surgeons in deciding which route is right for a particular child.

Dr. Salim is President of the Oman Heart Association and a board member of the Gulf Heart Association. He has been Director of the National Heart Center since 2015, previously led the Child Health Department at the Royal Hospital for five years, and sat on the Paediatric Scientific Committee of the Oman Medical Specialty Board from 2006 to 2021. He has lectured on congenital heart disease at national and international conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals.

With families, Dr. Salim sets out the diagnosis and the plan in plain terms, including what will happen at each stage and what the alternatives are a diagnosis of a heart defect in a child is frightening, and parents make better decisions when they understand it.