Surgeons passed out from Thiruvananthapuram Medical College take part in alumni meet

Generations of surgeons who have come through the portals of Government Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram, met at a rare get-together of the Department of General Surgery here on Sunday.

A line of over 250 surgeons beginning with the 93-year-old O.S. Menon – who was the head of the General Surgery department from 1985-88 – to new generation surgeons who passed out from the department in 2025, were part of this event which was held at the Diamond Jubilee auditorium.

Alumni of the General Surgery department came from Kerala as well as from abroad to attend the event, which took them down the memory lane spanning decades.

The General Surgery department was first established at Thiruvananthapuram Government Medical College in 1953. It took another seven years for the department to launch its postgraduate (MS) course in General Surgery in 1960, with two seats.

The get together was attended by faculty who served in the department from 1953 as well as students who did their MS in General Surgery from the department since 1960.

Dr. O.S. Menon lit the lamp and formally inaugurated the get together. Some of the oldest heads of the department, P.A. Thomas, K.N. Vijayan, Serena Mathew, B.K. Madhumohan and C. Karthikeyan, the Director of Medical Education, K.V. Viswanathan and the Head of General Surgery department, A. Nizaruddin were present on the occasion.

The meeting also honoured Dr. Viswanathan, the first General Surgery faculty to become the DME and Santhosh John Abraham, who is the first from Kerala to be elected as the national president of Association of Surgeons of India.

A continuing medical education programme on the advances in head and neck surgery was also conducted on the occasion, in which over 30 papers were presented by expert doctors on various aspects of and innovations in head and neck surgery related to cancer as well as other diseases.