Introduction

From General Surgery to Surgical Disciplines – A really short history! 

The Department of General Surgery was established at the time of inception of the institute in 1956, with Col. Sangam Lal as its first head, located in the area now called as the New Private Wards (NPW). It moved to the 6^th Floor when the Main AIIMS building was completed in 1962 and then ascended to the 7^th Floor in 1987. In the later part of 2021, the department shifted to SURGERY BLOCK located in the Masjid moth campus of the institute.

 By the mid-1980s, the Department comprised of 4 Units of Surgery headed by Prof LK Sharma, Prof IK Dhawan, Prof MM Kapur and Prof. BML Kapoor. Other renowned faculty members included Drs RK Khazanchi, Samiran Nundy, TK Chattopahyay, SN Mehta, Naresh Madan and Ramesh Sarin, NK Shukla, MC Misra and AK Kriplani.  Drs Anurag Srivastava, S Bal, Arvind Kumar, Sunil Chumber, Sandeep Guleria, V Seenu Dr Rajinder Parshad and Sandeep Agarwal joined the faculty in the 1990s. Dr LR Murmu joined with Emergency Medicine. Most of the young faculty joined in the new millennium. 

General Surgery has also acted as a parent giving rise to the sub-specialities of Urology and Paediatric Surgery as independent departments in 1963 and 1969 respectively.  Since 1986, gastrointestinal surgery separated and became the Department of GI Surgery and Liver Transplant later on. At same time, the Department underwent a change and became the Department of Surgical Disciplines. Trauma surgery was transferred to the newly created JPN Trauma Center in 2005. Again in 2015, the Department of Plastic Surgery was created out of Surgery. 

Since inception the department has been progressing in medical education, research and providing state of the art healthcare. The department has gained immense popularity for advanced work in general surgery, minimal access surgery, breast and endocrine surgery, peripheral vascular, thoracic, and bariatric and gastro intestinal operations along with both live and cadaveric renal transplant.  

 The Department has been providing training to undergraduate (MBBS) and post graduate (MS) general surgery students and various para-medical and nursing courses run by the institution. It also provides MCh in Breast, Endocrine Surgery, and Minimal Access Surgery and fellowships in Renal Transplant and Bariatric Surgery.  

 Among the notables of this department, the tenure of Dr Sangham Lal as Head, was followed by Prof. Eric Lazaro and Prof. B.N.B. Rao. Prof. Atm Prakash, who died in office, was followed by Prof. I.K. Dhawan, Prof. B.M.L. Kapur and Prof. L.K. Sharma who superannuated in 1992. Prof. S.N. Mehta became head and was followed by Prof. T.K. Chattopadhyay (who later went to join the GI Surgery department). Prof. MC Misra, on becoming the Director was followed by Prof. Anurag Srivastava. Prof. Sunil Chumber, who joined the All India Institute of Medical Sciences as an undergraduate student in 1980 has taken over during Covid times in this year.      

 The faculty has also participated in various administrative and academic responsibilities. Dr MM Kapur, Dr Sunil Chumber and Dr VK Bansal have served as the Sub-(now Associate) Deans. Prof. MM Kapur has served as the Dean and Prof. MC Misra also served as the Director of this institute. 

 Presently the department is being headed by Prof Sunil Chumber and comprises of four units doing specialised areas of work along with general surgery. The other celebrated faculty members are Profs Rajinder Parshad, V Seenu, Sandeep Agarwal, and VK Bansal, Anita Dhar, Sushma Sagar, Subodh Kumar, Amit Gupta and Biplab Mishra. Others include Drs Hemanga Bhattacharjee, Asuri Krishna, Piyush Ranjan, Manjunath, Mohit Joshi, Kamal Kataria, Suhani, Yashwant Rathore, Om Prakash Prajapati, Abhinav Kumar, Pratyusha Priyadarshani, Narendra Chaudhary, Dinesh Bagaria and Junaid Alam. From Emergency we have Prof. L R Murmu and Dr Tej Prakash Sinha also. 

 In present times, the department has gained immense popularity for doing advanced work in breast and endocrine surgery, peripheral vascular, thoracic, bariatric and gastro-intestinal operations along with both live and cadaveric renal transplant. A large proportion of operations are being carried out by minimally access technique including robotic surgeries.  

 Many well-designed research trials too have been conducted in the department involving all the core areas like general surgery, breast and endocrine surgery, minimally invasive surgeries, morbid obesity and bariatric surgery, renal transplantation, peripheral vascular diseases (including stem cell therapy), venous disease and lymphedema.  The outcomes of many of the research programs have been presented in leading national and international conferences and published in leading medical journals.