Genealogy

The year was 1954, the month December, the place Nagpur, and the occasion was the Annual Conference of the Association of Surgeons of India (AS.I.). The cardiovascular- thoracic surgeons (then known simply as thoracic surgeons) of India met together and resolved to unite into a separate body to be known as the Thoracic Surgery section of ASI. They held their first annual meeting along with the Annual Conference of the ASI the very next year, with Dr. Reeve H. Betts as President and Late Dr. A.K. Basu as the Secretary.

Through the efforts of Late Dr. Meherji Mehta and Dr. B.L. Gupta, the thoracic surgeons of India conducted their scientific meeting independently for the first time in September 1970 at Bombay. This was termed as the Mid-term Conference. Two years later, in August 1972, the noted cardiologist Late Dr. Sujay B. Roy and the pioneer heart surgeon Dr. N. Gopinath brought the Cardiologists and Cardiothoracic Surgeons together for the first joint Conference organized at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.

The Thoracic Surgery Section of the ASI was registered as the Association of Thoracic & Cardiovascular Surgeons of India (AT.C.V.S.I.) in the year 1982. The first issue of the Indian Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (I.J.T.C.V.S.) with Dr. Solomon Victor as the Editor was published also in the same year. The ATCVSI continued to hold its mid-term conferences with the Cardiological Society of India and the Annual Meetings with the Annual Conference of the ASI. Increasingly, the cardiovascular-thoracic surgeons had to play essentially a secondary role, both during the mid-term and the annual conference. Their efforts to hold the Mid-term Conference before October or to shift the Annual Conference of the ASI from December to February met with no success. The Annual Conferences became thinly attended affairs and the Mid-term Conferences hardly discussed papers on General Thoracic and Vascular Surgery.

Consequently, in 1985 at Bangalore, during the presidency of Dr. J.S. Gujral, it was unanimously decided to hold the annual scientific meeting of the thoracic and cardiovascular surgeons independently in the month of February every year in pursuance of this decision the first independent Annual Conference of ATCVSI was held at Madras in February, 1988. Encouraged, and almost astounded, by the tremendous success of this conference, steps were taken towards forming a new autonomous society. A committee consisting of Dr. P. Shatapathy as Chairman and Dr. P. Venugopal and Late Dr. P.S. Narayanan as Members prepared the drafts of the Memorandum of the Association, the Rules and Regulations (Constitution) and the By-laws for the proposed new society. These were adopted at Pune in 1990 and, finally, the Indian Association of Cardiovascular-thoracic Surgeons (I.A.C.T.S) with Dr. K.R. Shetty as the protem President was registered at Bombay under Societies Act, 1860 and Bombay Public Trust Act, 1950.

The same year, on 15.6.1991, the ATCVSI was dissolved, through the unanimous resolution passed by General Body during its annual meeting held at Bombay, and its entire membership, fund and assets were transferred to the new society, the IACTS. Soon thereafter, elections through secret ballot were conducted for the first time and Executive Committee of the IACTS with Dr. Sharad Panday as President and Dr, P. Shatapathy as the Secretary took charge. The following year the Fellowship of the Association (F.I.A.C.S.) was instituted and regular biannual publication of the Journal (IJTCVS) commenced.

Since then it has been a tale of unprecedented growth and unparalleled development, underscoring the adage.

Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one Thing that insures the successful outcome of our venture.