Medical milestone

"It was here in Nair Hospital on February 15, 1961 that Dr Kersi N. Dastur performed the country’s first open heart surgery to fix the hole in 19-year-old Hem­lata’s heart,” recalled the hospital’s dean Dr R. Rananavre 50 years later to the day. Cardiac surgeons had congregated in the Nair Hospital auditorium to observe the golden jubilee of the path-breaking surgery, with two surviving members of the original team, urologist Dr Fardoon P. Soonawala and technician P. Patel on the dais receiving a standing ovation, reported The Times of India (TOI) in its edition of February 16, 2011.

Dr Kersi N. Dastur: breached new medical frontiers

With complicated cardiac surgery commonplace today, it is difficult to imagine the limitations within which the pioneering team had to function. Since in those days it was virtually impossible to import equipment and devices, Dastur, who worked as an honorary cardio­thoracic surgeon at the hospital, drew a blueprint of a heart-lung machine and approached a steel manufacturer to fabricate it, pooling in his own money for the purpose. An oxygen meter was also made indigenously. He then started classes for surgeons who operated on canines to perfect their technique. It took four to five years before the team was ready for the first surgery, performed on Hemlata, daughter of an IAS (Indian Administrative Service) officer, notes TOI.

This operation breached a new medical frontier with hospitals in the city and country setting up open heart surgery units. "Dr Dastur himself set up the department at Breach Candy and Nanavati Hospitals,” noted Soonawala. Dr Ratna Magotra, India’s first woman cardiac surgeon paid a power point tribute to her late teacher. She recalled that Dastur "truly believed... that whatever we do here should be for the advancement of science and not for personal glory. He often referred to himself as a general surgeon who went wherever blood vessels did!”

Dastur’s contemporary Dr B. Kalke stressed the need for better laboratory research facilities in the country. Dastur himself had begun his laboratory work years before his landmark surgery in 1961. "In the west it would not have taken so long as they have better resources,” he said.