On 6 January 1948, in Kottayam, Kerala, a boy named Mathew Samuel Kalarickal was born. He studied at Union Christian College, Aluva, earned his MBBS from Government Medical College, Kottayam, in 1974, his MD from Stanley Medical College in 1978, and his DM in Cardiology from Madras Medical College in 1981.

After early work in Indonesia and Oman, he trained in the United States under Andreas Grüntzig, the pioneer of coronary angioplasty. In 1985 he returned to India and joined Apollo Hospitals in Chennai. The following year, in 1986, he performed the first coronary angioplasty in the country—opening a blocked artery without major surgery and giving a new lease of life to a patient who might otherwise have faced open-heart surgery or worse.

One evening a young cardiologist asked him, “Sir, why take such risks with a new technique when the old ways are safer and familiar?”

Kalarickal answered calmly, “Because every blocked artery is a life waiting to be saved. If we can clear the path with a catheter instead of a scalpel, we give the patient a gentler second chance.”

He went on to specialise in coronary angioplasty, stenting, carotid stenting and rotablator atherectomy. He trained scores of cardiologists across India, Southeast Asia and beyond, and helped establish angioplasty facilities throughout the region. He served as President of the Asian-Pacific Society of Interventional Cardiology and continued practising and mentoring until late in life.

In 1996 he received the Dr. B. C. Roy Award. In 2000 the nation conferred on him the Padma Shri. A Doctor of Science (honoris causa) from the Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University followed.

When colleagues called him the Father of Angioplasty in India he only said, “I simply brought a new tool home. The real credit belongs to every patient who trusted us and every student who carried the skill forward.”

On 18 April 2025, at the age of seventy-seven, Dr. Mathew Samuel Kalarickal passed away in Chennai. Yet the thousands of lives restored through the procedures he pioneered, and the many doctors he trained, continue his quiet legacy:

“Master the new technique with care. Teach it freely. And never forget that every open artery is a heartbeat given back to a family.”