GKNM Hospital started as a mother and child Hospital in 1952 and has currently grown to a 630-bed multi-specialty center. It has as its core competence unit, cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery. The specialty of cardiac surgery was started in 1974 and became fully operational with open heart procedures in 1986. It is currently a tertiary referral center performing all complex cases. The unit performs close to 1600 open heart procedures a year.

This department has been conducting the Annual workshops since 1998 focusing on one aspect of cardiac surgery each year. This meeting is acclaimed as the best in the country in terms of scientific content and conduct. Each year we have about 225 delegates participating and the numbers keep growing each year. The program is fully focused on the academic content and experts in that specific area are invited to address and demonstrate the skills and advances. We are one of the very few centres in the world that does live workshops headed by the masters, which we believe is the best form of learning and teaching.

Dr Chandrasekar, Course Director, is the architect of GKNM liveSURGE and has conducted 20 such live workshops since 1998. The annual event helps shape and advance the academics in the field of Cardio-thoracic surgery in the country.