M.B.B.S., M.S. (General Surgery), M.Ch. (Cardio-Thoracic and Vascular Surgery)
15+ years
Dr. Sandeep Attawar is the Director of the Lung Transplant Department at Sir H. N. Reliance Foundation Hospital.
Dr. Attawar graduated and specialised in General Surgery at the Seth KM School of Post Graduate Medicine and further specialised in Cardiac Surgery at the Sri Chitra Thirunal Institute, Trivandrum. He subsequently worked at the Manipal Heart Foundation and Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangalore. Since 2001, Dr. Attawar has been actively involved in setting up Greenfield Heart Surgical Services, and since 2011, he has expanded the services to perform thoracic organ transplantation and mechanical circulatory support.
Now, Dr. Attawar focuses on the top-down realignment of pre-existing cardiac and respiratory services into heart and lung transplant centres. He did that for the Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Mumbai branches of Gleneagles Global Hospitals before becoming the Founding Director of the Solid Thoracic Organ TX Programme at KIMS Hospitals. Dr. Attawar’s team has performed more than 555 thoracic organ transplants (381 double lung transplants, 117 heart transplants, and 57 combined heart and lung transplants) and 50 long-term ventricular assist device (LVAD) implants.
Dr. Attawar was chosen as a member of an international panel comprising 24 experts to lay down the guidelines for lung transplantations for the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT). These guidelines are considered the lung transplant bible at over 250 hospitals worldwide that perform lung transplantation procedures. Dr. Attawar is a Scientific Adviser for Reliant Heart— a leading innovator in mechanical circulatory support therapies for advanced stage heart failure. In this role, he contributes to the development and progress of technologies related to mechanically assisted circulation. He is currently the Proctor for Jarvik Heart and HeartMate 3 in India and South East Asia.
Dr. Attawar contributed to the to-be-released textbook titled ‘Transplantations and Mechanical Circulatory Support for End-stage Lung and Heart Disease’ (Wiley Publishing). He has published in leading journals such as the Annals of Thoracic Surgery (ATS), and regularly delivers presentations worldwide. He is also an Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Thoracic Disease.
Dr. Attawar is a firm believer in universal access to quality care and outcomes in heart and lung transplants and strives to provide the highest quality of care to patients.