Dr. Zahraa Ghanim Hussein Al Abbas

Dr. Zahraa is a Consultant Anaesthesiologist and Head of the Anaesthesia & ICU Department at Muscat Private Hospital, with 26 years of experience in anesthesia, intensive care, and pain management. She leads a department of four senior, experienced anaesthesiologists and provides anaesthesia and critical care across every surgical specialty in the hospital, from general and orthopaedic surgery to obstetrics, paediatrics, and neurosurgery.

She earned her MBChB from Al-Mustansiriya University College of Medicine, Baghdad, Iraq (1990–1997), followed by a High Diploma in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care from the University of Baghdad (2002–2003). She completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Regional Anaesthesia and Pain Management at the University of Montpellier 1, France (2010–2011), and holds the European Diploma in Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care (EDAIC) from the European Society of Anaesthesiology (2022).

Her practice spans the full range of anaesthesia sub-specialties — obstetric anaesthesia for cesarean sections and high-risk pregnancies, including labor epidural analgesia; paediatric anaesthesia; orthopaedic anaesthesia, including combined spinal-epidural blocks for joint replacement surgery; and neuro-anesthesia for craniotomy, spine surgery, and neurosurgical emergencies. She manages difficult airways using advanced tools including videolaryngoscopy (Glidescope) and fibreoptic intubation, performs ultrasound-guided regional nerve blocks, and leads the hospital's Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) team during cardiac arrests.

Dr. Zahraa has particular expertise in acute and chronic pain management, treating sickle cell disease and cancer patients with regional nerve blocks, opioid infusions, and patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) as part of a multimodal approach, and providing procedural sedation for endoscopy, cardioversion, and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). She sees her role as extending far beyond putting a patient to sleep — describing herself as her patients' advocate when they cannot speak for themselves, monitoring their heart, breathing, and comfort continuously from the moment surgery begins until they are safely recovering.