Sharad Panday

Sharad Pandey (22 October 1934 – 8 November 2004) was an Indian heart surgeon. He was on the team of surgeons who performed the first-ever heart transplant in India at the King Edward Memorial Hospital and Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College in Mumbai. He was a specialist in bloodless heart surgery, and was an early exponent of bloodless open heart surgery in India. Early life and education Sharad Panday was born on 22 October 1934 in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. A student of Don Bosco High School, Matunga, he completed medicine and Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery at Grant Medical College and Sir Jamshedjee Jeejeebhoy Group of Hospitals, Bombay. Panday moved to Canada to complete his Master of Surgery and Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Canada. Panday was a recipient of the Ontario Heart Foundation fellowship in 1969. Career Open heart surgery in India was at a nascent stage in the 1970s and early 1980s. After Panday returned to India from Canada, he joined the King Edward Memorial Hospital and Seth Gordhandas Sunderdas Medical College (KEM), in which he performed hundreds of open heart surgeries. The hospital was run on a government grant and generally catered to the middle class and poor, as the surgery was at the cost of the government. The hospital was one of the very few places in India where heart surgery was performed. Panday was the chief of the second unit at KEM. On 16 February 1968, after many years of preparation and work with animal models, a team of heart surgeons headed by P. K. Sen and which included Sharad Panday performed the first heart transplant in India–and only the sixth in the world–at KEM.