IACTS Awards Lifetime Achievement Award to Dr. K.M. Cherian

The Lifetime Achievement Award is the highest honor bestowed by the IACTS and it was conferred to Dr. Cherian by Dr. Rajan Santhosham, President of IACTS. The award was presented to him at the Combined 18th Annual Meeting of the Asian Society for Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery & 56th Indian Association of Cardiovascular Thoracic Surgeons 2010 (CTCOMCON 2010) CTCOMCON 2010 is a unique scientific programme which also sees an important and active participation from the American Association of Thoracic Surgery. The awards ceremony was a part of the three day CTCOMON conference.

Dr. Cherian has already been the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award in the field of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery which was bestowed to him by the Pediatric Cardiology Society of India (PCSI) in the year 2005.

On receiving the award, Dr. K. M. Cherian, CEO and Chairman of Frontier Lifeline Hospital said "I am immensely happy to receive this award from the IACTS. I consider this award as a true testimony in recognizing me as a complete surgeon in terms of adult and pediatric cardiac surgery".

Dr. K.M. Cherian has been a cardiac surgeon for over four decades now and has many firsts to his phenomenal career in the country. To name a few are; First heart transplant after legalization of brain death, First bilateral lung transplant, First pediatric heart transplant, First auto transplant, First heart and lung transplant and many more to the list. He has performed close to 35,000 surgeries and over 30 transplants. Time and again, honors and awards have been bestowed upon him, notably the Padmashri Award by the Govt. of India in 1991 and the unique honor of having been the Honorary Surgeon to the President of India from the year 1990 to 1993. This Lifetime Achievement Award comes as another leaf to his extraordinary career as a cardiac surgeon. Dr. Cherian is also the president of the 20th World Congress of the World Society of Cardio Thoracic Surgeons. He is responsible for bringing this international Congress to India for the first time which is scheduled from 20th to 23rd October 2010.