On 12 August 1945, in a family of doctors displaced by Partition, a boy named Naresh Trehan was born. His mother was a gynaecologist, his father an ENT specialist. He grew up determined to heal the most vital organ of all—the heart. After earning his MBBS from King George’s Medical College in Lucknow in 1968, he married Madhu and moved to the United States. There he trained and practised at New York University Medical Center, becoming a skilled cardiovascular and cardiothoracic surgeon known for handling complex cases with speed and precision.

In 1988, despite a thriving career in America, he returned to India. “My country needs this care more than I need the comfort here,” he told colleagues who urged him to stay. He founded the Escorts Heart Institute and Research Centre in Delhi, creating one of the first world-class cardiac centres in the country. Patients who had once travelled abroad for surgery could now be treated at home. Over the decades he performed more than 48,000 open-heart surgeries.

One evening a young surgeon asked him, “Sir, after so many successful operations, what still drives you into the theatre?”

Trehan answered quietly, “Every heart that stops is a family waiting in fear. If my hands can start it beating again, that is reason enough to keep going.”

In 2009 he founded Medanta – The Medicity in Gurugram, a multi-specialty hospital that continues his vision of advanced, accessible care. He has served as personal surgeon to the President of India since 1991 and remains Chairman and Managing Director of Medanta, still operating and mentoring.

The nation honoured him with the Padma Shri in 1991 and the Padma Bhushan in 2001, along with the Dr. B. C. Roy Award and many other distinctions. When admirers listed his achievements he only said, “These belong to every patient who trusted us with their heartbeat and to every young doctor who chooses to stay and serve India.”

Today Padma Bhushan Dr. Naresh Trehan continues the work he began more than five decades ago, guided by a simple creed:

“Master the craft with discipline. Build institutions that outlast you. And never forget that the true measure of a heart surgeon is the life restored to a waiting family.”