Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: witnessed the loss of one of India's pathbreaking cardiovascular surgeon with the passing away of Professor Panangipalli Venugopal at the age of 82 years.Dr Venugopal was born in Rajahmundry in the state of Andhra Pradesh into a farming family.A passion for medicine brought him to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi (AIIMS) where he completed his MBBS in 1963 securing the Institute Gold Medal for the best outgoing student.He then went to the Post Graduate Institute for Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh for his Masters in General Surgery.He returned to AIIMS for training in Cardiothoracic surgery under Professor N. Gopinath and obtained his MCh degree in Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery (CTVS) with honours.He was then inducted into the faculty of the department as a lecturer.In 1972 he went to the USA for further training and had the opportunity to train first under Dr S. Subramaniam, a leading pediatric cardiac surgeon in Buffalo and then under the legendary Dr Denton Cooley at the Texas Heart Institute.Returning to AIIMS in 1974 he set about assisting Professor Gopinath in stabilizing the nascent open heart surgery programme and establishing the Cardiothoracic centre which was struggling to take off from the drawing board.Open heart surgeries those days were limited to one case a day, four to five days a week with sub-optimal results.Dr Venugopal along with Dr I.M. Rao and Dr Sampath Kumar worked hard to increase the numbers of cases and improve outcomes.When Professor Gopinath retired in 1982, Dr Venugopal took over as Head of the Department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery.The Cardiothoracic and Neurosciences Centre which had been envisaged way back in 1971 was finally commissioned in August 1985 and led immediately to a spurt in the number of open-heart surgeries.Under his leadership the centre grew from strength to strength and became established as the national leader in clinical services as well as training in cardiac surgery.The MCh programme in CTVS at AIIMS remains one of the most sought after in the country and now a couple of generations of cardiac surgeons in the country can trace their training lineage back to Professor Gopinath and Dr Venugopal.In all over 120 cardiac surgeons would have trained under Dr Venugopal, many of whom have made a name for themselves nationally and internationally.As Chief of the Cardiothoracic centre Dr Venugopal was also responsible for establishing new DM courses in cardiac subspecialties such as cardiac anaesthesia, cardiac radiology and cardiac intensive care.In August 1984, Dr Venugopal preformed the first successful heart transplant in India.This achievement earned him many accolades in academic and political circles.The first successful transplant paved the way for transplant surgery to become
Author: KRISHNA S. IYER
Language: English
Topic: History of Medical Practice
Subfield: Neurology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4407383023