A year-long celebration of renowned clinician, teacher, and humanitarian, the late K.V. The celebrations, in memory of Prof. Thiruvengadam’s extraordinary impact on medicine both in Chennai and beyond, will focus on restoring the art of listening to the patient, examining at the bedside, thinking before ordering a test, and finally, and dwelling on the fundamental question of what it means to be a good physician in an age of extraordinary technology.
Thiruvengadam will kick off in his centenary year on Sunday (October 11, 2026).
K. His core areas of specialty were chest medicine, allergies and infectious diseases. His career coincided with a period when medicine was rapidly expanding, but his students remember that he did not teach bedside examination as a ceremonial ritual — he taught it as a way of thinking, listening to the patient, and asking the right questions. Prof. KVT was a scientist as well as a clinician. He received formal training in chest diseases in the U.K., under the Colombo Plan. Among the many areas of his research were chikungunya fever, neurological complications following influenza and amoebiasis. He also investigated traditional medicines in allergic lung and skin diseases. He worked for decades in the government system, among the poorest in society, and believed that government service could achieve extraordinary things when doctors had the willingness to serve. For him, medicine was a social responsibility.
Vardachari Thiruvengadam, fondly known as KVT, was born in 1926. He graduated from Government Stanley Medical College in 1950 and taught for 31 years both at his alma mater and at Madras Medical College, and subsequently at private institutions. He published nearly 100 papers in national and international journals.
The proposed celebration aims to take to medical students and postgraduate doctors the importance of history-taking, clinical examination, clinical reasoning and their role not only in diagnosis and management, but also in medical research.
K.V. Thiruvengadam Memorial Oration will be delivered at Sree Balaji Medical College and Hospital, by S.R. Chandra, on ‘The Patient Speaks, the Doctor Thinks and the Research Begins’, alongside a national conference on movement disorders.
On October 31, the third Prof.
