Harpreet Wasir

During my tenures both as an undergraduate from Maulana Azad Medical College & Assoc Lok Narain Jaiprakash Hospital and postgraduate from Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh from where I completed my General surgery programme, my training had been under the supervision of faculty par excellence of national and international repute. The same continued after I joined the department of CTVS at the prestigious AIIMS, New Delhi. As a senior resident on Dept. of CTVS (AIIMS) I was responsible in active participation in preoperative and postoperative patient care. Managing new and follow-up patients in clinics was a regular responsibility throughout. Supervising junior residents for their initial training was a challenging job from the beginning. I was actively involved in performing surgery initially under supervision and later independently and being with the patient all throughout until their discharge from the ward. I was associated with over 1500 cardiac operations including CABG, valve replacement and correction of complex and simple congenital cardiac malformations during my training programme. After joining EHIRC, New Delhi first as an attending Cardiac Surgeon and then been promoted as Junior Consultant in Cardiac Surgery, my experience grew while dealing with all variety of adult Cardiac Surgery. During the last 3 years during which our team has continued to perform basically routine variety of adult Cardiac Surgery along with specialised procedure such as Heart Port Surgery, Redo CABG’s all variety of Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery dealing with coronary arteries and valves, and Robotic Cardiac Surgery which was first introduced in our setup for the first time in India. Our experience with Robotic Cardiac Surgery is the maximum in India. My interest in research has been right from school days where the inception came from dissections of various insects and small animals to know the intricacies of living beings. I headed the science club and various activities got me the prestigious Duke of Edinburgh Award for overall performance. Interest in research continued throughout in college and medical school. My interest in sepsis made us do for the first time research work in animals (Research fellowship — Indian Council of Medical Research, ICMR) to show a direct relationship between sepsis and free radicals. While continuing my teaching in Cardiac Surgery I have undertaken various research projects which lately includes patho-physiology of Valvular Heart Disease in failing heart (Ischemic Mitral Valve Disease) for which I visited various centres in Minneapolis and San Francisco to learn about Mitral Valve Anatomy in the failing Heart.