Dr Mathew Samuel Kalarickal

Pioneer profile. This is a commemorative entry in the World Elite Doctors hall of pioneers and is not a listing for consultation or referral.

The father of angioplasty in India

Mathew Samuel Kalarickal was born on 6 January 1948 and died on 18 April 2025 at the age of seventy-seven. He trained in the United States under Andreas Gruentzig, the originator of coronary balloon angioplasty, and returned to India in 1985 carrying a technique that the country had read about but not yet performed.

1986, and the beginning of Indian interventional cardiology

He performed India’s first coronary angioplasty in 1986. The significance is easy to understate at this distance: it was done without the catheter inventory, the imaging, the backup or the trained laboratory staff that any Indian centre now takes for granted, and in a professional climate in which the procedure was regarded with considerable suspicion. Indian interventional cardiology, now among the largest in the world by volume, dates from that case.

Extending the range

He went on to introduce coronary stenting, carotid stenting and rotablator atherectomy to Indian practice, each time importing a technique early rather than waiting for it to become routine elsewhere. He held senior positions at Medistra Hospital in Jakarta and the Royal Hospital in Muscat, and served as Director of Interventional Cardiology at Apollo Hospitals in Chennai.

Recognition

He received the Dr B. C. Roy Award for interventional cardiology in 1996, the Padma Shri from the President of India in 2000, and a Doctor of Science from Dr M.G.R. Medical University in 2003. He was also honoured in 2000 among the country’s highest individual taxpayers, an unusual distinction for a physician and one he was said to regard with some amusement.

The training legacy

His more durable contribution was the operators he trained. A large number of the interventional cardiologists now practising in India learned the technique from him directly or from those he taught, which is why his name is invoked in Indian catheterisation laboratories far more often than the date of the first case is remembered.