Dr. Pradeep Vaideeswar

Pradeep Vaideeswar works in the Cardiovascular and Thoracic Division of the Department of Pathology at Seth G. S. Medical College and KEM Hospital in Mumbai — the same institution where V. R. Khanolkar taught, some eighty years earlier. He has more than three decades in the discipline and is regarded internationally as an authority on cardiovascular pathology.

Cardiovascular pathology is an unusual subspecialty to sustain. Much of it is autopsy-based at a time when autopsy rates have collapsed almost everywhere, and the surgical material is dominated by valve and vascular specimens that many general departments handle only occasionally. Building a division around it, and a publication record of more than 200 papers and numerous book chapters, is a deliberate act rather than a career that happened.

He was President of the Indian Association of Pathologists and Microbiologists in 2019 — one of several holders of that office in this series, which is a fair indication of how the discipline distributes its recognition.

The Indian cardiac disease profile differs materially from the Western one: rheumatic heart disease remains common, presentations are often late, and the surgical population is younger. A pathologist reporting that material is describing a spectrum of disease the standard references were not written around.