The Master of the Cerclage: The Story of Dr. Vithalrao Nagesh Shirodkar

In the small village of Shiroda in Goa, on 27 April 1899, a boy named Vithal Nagesh Shirodkar was born into a community that valued learning and service. From those quiet coastal beginnings would emerge one of the most influential obstetricians and gynaecologists India has ever produced—a man whose name would be spoken in operating theatres across the world.

He studied at Grant Medical College in Bombay, graduating with his MBBS in 1923 and later earning his MD in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 1927. Seeking the highest standards of surgical training, he travelled to the United Kingdom and obtained the prestigious Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS) in 1931. There he worked alongside distinguished figures such as Professor J. Chassar Moir and others, absorbing both technique and a spirit of inquiry.

Returning to India in 1935, he joined the Sir J.J. Group of Hospitals in Bombay as Honorary Obstetrician and Gynaecologist. He later became Professor at Grant Medical College. Students remembered him as an inspiring teacher—precise, demanding, and endlessly curious. “Question everything that is routine,” he would tell them. “Only then will you discover something new.”

His greatest contribution came from that very spirit of questioning. He recognised that many women suffered repeated second-trimester miscarriages because of cervical incompetence—a weak cervix that could not hold the pregnancy. In 1955 he described a pioneering operation: the cervical cerclage, in which a permanent or temporary suture is placed around the cervix to strengthen it. He designed special instruments for the procedure and presented his technique on international platforms in Paris and Naples. The world soon adopted it as the “Shirodkar cerclage.” Generations of women who had lost pregnancy after pregnancy finally carried babies to term because of that single innovation.

He also refined operations for uterine prolapse, tuboplasty to restore fertility, and the creation of a neovagina. He published widely, contributed chapters to international textbooks, and remained deeply engaged with social medicine. He helped establish the Family Planning Association of India and served on the Shantilal Shah Committee that examined the issue of abortion.

Beyond the operating theatre he was a man of many interests—an accomplished violinist, a painter, and a lover of sports. Colleagues recalled a gentle humour and a quiet dignity that never left him, even when treating the famous or the forgotten with equal care.

The Government of India recognised his work with the Padma Bhushan in 1960 and, in January 1971, the Padma Vibhushan—one of the nation’s highest civilian honours. Only weeks later, on 7 March 1971, Dr. Vithalrao Nagesh Shirodkar passed away in Mumbai at the age of seventy-one.

His legacy lives on every time a surgeon places a Shirodkar stitch and a mother hears the cry of a child she once feared she would never hold. In the story of Indian medicine he stands as a true pioneer—an innovator who turned clinical observation into lasting hope for women around the world.