The Surgeon Who Opened the World of Sound: The Story of Dr. Milind Vasant Kirtane

In Mumbai, a city of constant noise and movement, one ENT surgeon has spent more than five decades helping people—especially children—hear it all for the first time. Dr. Milind Vasant Kirtane, a pioneering otorhinolaryngologist, is best known for bringing the gift of sound through cochlear implant surgery and for training a generation of surgeons across India.

A Maharashtrian by birth, he joined Seth G.S. Medical College and King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital in Mumbai as an undergraduate in 1965. He completed his MS in Otorhinolaryngology there, later serving as a full-time professor and, after retirement, as Honorary and Emeritus Professor—an association lasting over fifty years. He specialises in cochlear implants, endoscopic sinus surgery, neurotology (including the management of vertigo), and advanced otologic procedures.

Dr. Kirtane is credited with performing the first cochlear implant surgery in Mumbai. Over the years he has personally performed or supervised as mentor more than 3,000–4,000 cochlear implant procedures. Beyond the operating theatre he has travelled across the country training surgeons and helping establish more than sixty cochlear implant centres nationwide. Through the I Hear Foundation he supports funding for children from economically weaker sections so that financial barriers do not stand between a child and the ability to hear.

He has served as Honorary Consulting ENT Surgeon at leading Mumbai hospitals including P.D. Hinduja National Hospital, Breach Candy Hospital and Saifee Hospital, as Honorary ENT Consultant to the Governor of Maharashtra, and earlier as Honorary Neuro-Otologist to the Indian Armed Forces. He was the Founder President of the Sinus Endoscopic Society of India, a past President of the Association of Otolaryngologists of India and the Cochlear Implant Group of India, and the first Indian elected to the prestigious Barany Society in Sweden.

In 2005 he received the Dr. B.C. Roy Award. In 2014 the Government of India conferred upon him the Padma Shri for his contributions to medicine. Other honours include the Qimpro Award and lifetime achievement recognitions from professional bodies. He has authored and edited textbooks and published extensively in the field.

One evening, after a successful implant surgery on a young child, a junior colleague asked him, “Sir, after thousands of these operations, what still moves you the most?”

Dr. Milind Vasant Kirtane smiled the quiet smile of a man who has watched silence turn into laughter.

“When a child who has never heard a sound looks up at the mother’s voice for the first time and smiles,” he said, “that is the real reward. The surgery is only the beginning. The true work is giving that child a place in the hearing world—in the classroom, in the family, in life. Every centre we help set up, every young surgeon we train, multiplies that chance. That is why we keep going.”

And so the ENT surgeon from Mumbai who pioneered cochlear implantation in the city and spread the skill across India continues his quiet mission—restoring sound, mentoring others, and proving that with skill, persistence and compassion, the lonely world of silence can be opened to the wonderful world of hearing.