Dr. Gulshan Sethi’s arrival at the University of Arizona in 1988 marked the beginning of a transformation for cardiothoracic care in the Southwest. Decades later, a coalition of more than 60 donors ranging from former patients to the physician’s own family has ensured his name remains a permanent fixture of the institution’s future.
Funded by $1 million in gifts and commitments, the the Gulshan Sethi, MD Endowed Professorship in Cardiothoracic Surgery honors a man who performed more than 15,000 open-heart surgeries and fundamentally reshaped surgical training.
Dr. Sethi’s journey began thousands of miles from the Arizona desert. Born in Jammu, India, he graduated from the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi in 1964.
This rigorous foundation in India paved the way for a distinguished career in the United States, illustrating the vital contribution of Indian-trained physicians to American medicine. After completing residencies in Chicago and Kansas, and a fellowship at the University of Utah, Sethi eventually brought his expertise to Tucson.
Sethi is best known for pushing the boundaries of what was possible in the operating room. In 1989, he performed Arizona’s first single-lung transplant, a milestone that expanded the horizons of organ transplantation in the state.
Read: Indian American researcher Rahul Kanadia decodes rare genetic sequences
That same year, he established the Circulatory Science Program, the first master’s-level program in the nation to integrate pharmacology with perfusion technology.
“Training the next generation of cardiac surgeons was one of the greatest privileges of my career,” said Sethi who retired in 2017 as professor emeritus after publishing over 250 peer-reviewed articles and mentoring hundreds of residents.
The new professorship is a strategic component of the university’s broader $3 billion “Fuel Wonder”campaign. It also supports the Sarver Heart Center’s $75 million initiative to create a dedicated cardiovascular research institute.
Dr. Hesham Sadek, director of the Sarver Heart Center, noted that cardiothoracic education would not be where it is today without Sethi’s standards of excellence.
The endowment ensures that the high standards of excellence Sethi established spanning from traditional surgery to his later work in Integrative Medicine will continue to benefit the Tucson community for generations. For a surgeon who spent his life mending hearts, this honor serves as a permanent heartbeat for the program he helped build.