Professor Vijay Kakkar, a vascular surgeon and research scientist whose research into the use of heparin to prevent blood clots has saved countless lives, died peacefully in London on November 5, 2016. He was 79.
A family man Vijay Kakkar, OBE, FRCS, FRCSE, Professor Emeritus and founder director of the Thrombosis Research Institute, was dearly loved and devoted husband of Savitri, father of Ajay and Sanjay and grandfather of India, Tara, Jay and Gaia.
He came to Britain from India in 1961 to complete his postgraduate surgical training. Kakkar soon became interested in the treatment of thromboembolism where a blood clot breaks loose from a vessel and travels through the bloodstream to plug another vessel, often with devastating consequences.
His 1969 study on the natural history of postoperative deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) was the first to identify the extent of the problem, discovering that nearly a third of the 132 patients studied developed DVT in their legs following surgery.
A landmark 1975 trial, which he led, involving 4,121 patients from 28 treatment centres around the world, further vindicated Kakkar’s hypothesis.
Apart from family and cricket, he was into thrombosis. “My hobby is thrombosis,” he told the Daily Telegraph.
His both sons went into medicine. Ajay (Lord Kakkar), a professor of surgery, succeeded his father as director of the Thrombosis Research Institute, while Sanjay is a biotechnology entrepreneur.
