Dr Manikandan A
Consultant
Speciality
Liver Transplant
Qualification
  • MBBS
  • MS(General Surgery)
  • MRCS
  • MCh (GI Surgery)
  • FRCS (General & Transplant Surgery)
  • CESR (HPB & Liver Transplant)
  • MFSTEd
Experience
13+ Years
Gender
Male
Language Spoken
English
Tamil
Location
Chennai,Perumbakkam

  • About
  • Experience
  • Qualifications
  • Achievements
  • Publications

About

Dr. Manikandan Kathirvel is an internationally trained Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary (HPB) and Liver Transplant Surgeon with over 15 years of surgical experience, including extensive training and consultant practice in the United Kingdom. He holds FRCS (Transplant Surgery) and has been awarded CESR, entering him onto the GMC Specialist Register in General Surgery in the United Kingdom with special interest in HPB surgery and liver transplantation. He is a Gold Medalist in MCh GI Surgery and MS General Surgery, reflecting his strong academic foundation.

 

He has more than 13 years of experience in HPB surgery and liver transplantation and has been involved in over 3,400 complex surgical procedures. His clinical expertise includes multi-organ transplantation, advanced hepatobiliary oncology, liver transplantation, pancreas transplantation, and advanced laparoscopic HPB surgery, along with emerging machine perfusion technologies for organ preservation including Normothermic Machine Perfusion (NMP), Hypothermic Oxygenated Perfusion (HOPE), and Normothermic Regional Perfusion (NRP).

 

Dr. Manikandan Kathirvel has over 7 years of experience working at two of the United Kingdom’s busiest liver transplant centres — Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and Cambridge University Hospitals, where he gained extensive exposure to complex transplantation and organ retrieval surgery.

 

In addition to his clinical work, he is actively involved in research, innovation, and surgical education, with academic contributions including international guidelines, randomized controlled trials, and high-impact publications in liver transplantation and HPB surgery. He currently serves as a Vanguard Committee Member of the International Liver Transplantation Society (ILTS) and is the Founder and Program Director of PrepMedico, an international higher surgical education platform delivering FRCS mentoring and training programmes endorsed by leading surgical institutions in the United Kingdom.

Experience

  • Consultant – HPB Surgery, Liver Transplantation & General Surgery
    Whittington Health NHS Trust & Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom
    March 2023 – February 2026
  • Senior Clinical Fellow – HPB Surgery, Liver Transplantation & National Organ Retrieval Service (NORS)
    Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom
    February 2020 – March 2023
  • Senior Clinical Fellow – Multi-Organ Transplantation & Organ Retrieval Surgery
    Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, United Kingdom
    November 2018 – January 2020
  • MCh (GI Surgery) – Super-specialty Training
    Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi, India
    July 2015 – September 2018
  • Assistant Professor – Department of General Surgery
    PSG Institute of Medical Sciences & Research, Coimbatore, India
    2013 – 2015
  • Senior Resident – General Surgery
    PSG Institute of Medical Sciences & Research, Coimbatore, India
    2012 – 2013
  • Junior Resident – MS General Surgery Training
    PSG Institute of Medical Sciences & Research, Coimbatore, India
    2010 – 2012

Qualifications

  • MBBS – PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research
  • MS (General Surgery) – PSG IMS&R (Best Outgoing Topper)
  • MRCS – Royal College of Surgeons of England
  • MCh (GI Surgery) – Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences (Distinction & Gold Medal)
  • FRCS (General & Transplant Surgery) – Royal College of Surgeons of England
  • CESR (HPB & Liver Transplant) – General Medical Council
  • MFSTEd – Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh

Achievements

  • Member of the Faculty of Surgical Trainers (MFSTEd) – Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
  • FRCS (Transplant Surgery) – Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburg
  • Member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (MRCS)
  • CESR (Certificate of Eligibility for Specialist Registration) – United Kingdom; entered onto the GMC Specialist Register in General Surgery with special interest in HPB Surgery and Liver Transplantation
  • Vanguard Committee Member – International Liver Transplantation Society (ILTS)
  • Founder & Program Director – PrepMedico (2023), an international higher surgical education platform providing FRCS mentoring and surgical training, with courses endorsed by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Association of Surgeons in Training (ASiT), United Kingdom
  • Renowned international FRCS faculty and mentor, actively involved in higher surgical education and postgraduate surgical training
  • Outstanding Leadership Award – Education 2.0 Conference, Dubai (2024)
  • Outstanding Organization Award (PrepMedico) – Health 2.0 Conference, Dubai (2024)
  • Outstanding Leadership Award – Namma Medicine International Medical Symposium, Chennai (2023)
  • Excellence in Surgical Gastroenterology & Global Outreach Enterprise Educator Award – presented at the House of Commons, British Parliament, London, by the World Tamil Organization (2021)
  • Distinction  and Gold Medal in Surgical Gastroenterology – M.Ch GI Surgery (First Rank)
  • JS Gold Medal for Best Postgraduate Thesis – MS General Surgery
  • Prof. Balakrishnan Endowment Young Investigator Award (2020)
  • Author of paper describing the world’s first split liver successfully preserved using Normothermic Machine Perfusion, advancing machine perfusion technology in liver transplantation
  • Multiple Best Paper and Research Awards at national and international surgical conferences

Publications

  1. Olusola S, Choudhry M, Panem V, Wilson J, Rana S, Parmar C, Kathirvel M. Not all small bowel pneumatosis is ischaemia: a case-based systematic review of non-ischaemic causes. Ann R Coll Surg Engl. 2026 Mar 5. doi:10.1308/rcsann.2026.0011. PMID: 41782466.
  2. NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Global Surgery and the GlobalSurg Collaborative (Kathirvel M). Safety and equity in scaling minimally invasive surgery worldwide in 109 countries using cholecystectomy as a tracer procedure: a prospective cohort study. Lancet Glob Health. 2026 Feb;14(2):e199–e212. doi:10.1016/S2214-109X(25)00476-0. PMID: 41519150.
  3. Raghavan RP, Alexander KT, Sadasivan S, Parmar C, Kathirvel M. Genetic Variants in Liver Cirrhosis: Classifications, Mechanisms, and Implications for Clinical Practice. J Pers Med. 2026 Jan 5;16(1):29. doi:10.3390/jpm16010029. PMID: 41590522; PMCID: PMC12842787.
  4. Wilson EA, Khan MQ, Kyaw AMM, Magistri P, Tejedor M, Kathirvel M, Moral K, Shankar S, Mao S, Alconchel F, Di Maira T, Mathew JS, Patel MS, Syn N, Chadha R, Hakeem AR, Rammohan A. Proceedings of the 30th Annual Congress of the International Liver Transplantation Society. Liver Transpl. 2025 Dec 31. doi:10.1097/LVT.0000000000000802. PMID: 41490533.
  5. Sayed Blayne A, Tejedor M, Kathirvel M, Chadha R, Bhangui P, Rammohan A, Ghanekar A, Ivanics T, Kasahara M, Kim DS, Scatton O, Ghobrial M, Klair T, Rajakumar A, Bezinover D, Bittermann T, Don C, Surendran S, Hernandez-Alejandro R, Luzzi C, Tsien C, Di Benedetto F, Egawa H, Ascher N, Broering D, Burra P, Chen CL, Hirschfield G, Lerut J, Mas V, Taner T, Terrault N, Vyas M, Wiggins C, Fung JJ, Olthoff K, Rela M, Heimbach J, Selzner N. Living liver donor safety: Early postoperative considerations of living liver donation guidelines from the ILTS-iLDLTG consensus conference. Liver Transpl. 2025 Dec 18. doi:10.1097/LVT.0000000000000791. PMID: 41410428.
  6. Patel MS, Shankar S, Tejedor M, Barbas AS, Kim J, Mao S, Ivanics T, Shaji Mathew J, Shingina A, Khan MQ, Wilson EA, Syn N, Alconchel F, Patel D, Liu J, Nasralla D, Mazzola A, Tanaka T, Victor DW, Yoon YI, Vinaixa C, Mi Kyaw AM, Galante A, Magistri P, Kathirvel M, Aliseda D, Moral K, Di Maira T, De Martin E, Chadha R, Hakeem AR, Bonaccorsi-Riani E, Rammohan A. Proceedings of the 29th Annual Congress of the International Liver Transplantation Society. Liver Transpl. 2025 Mar 11. doi:10.1097/LVT.0000000000000593. PMID: 40062745.
  7. Olusola S, Jarman T, Parmar C, Kathirvel M. Parastomal Gallbladder Herniations: A Systematic Review. Cureus. 2024 Oct 13;16(10):e71379. doi:10.7759/cureus.71379. PMID: 39539891; PMCID: PMC11558021.
  8. Richards J, Summers D, Sidders A, Allen E, Ayaz Hossain M, Paul S, Slater M, Bartlett M, Lagaac R, Laing E, Hopkins V, Fitzpatrick-Creamer C, Hudson C, Parsons J, Turner S, Tambyraja A, Somalanka S, Hunter J, Dutta S, Hoye N, Lawman S, Salter T, Aslam MF, Bagul A, Sivaprakasam R, Smith GE, Thomas HL, Moinuddin Z, Knight SR, Barnett N, Motallebzadeh R, Pettigrew GJ; SONAR Trial Group (Manikandan Kathirvel). Doppler ultrasound surveillance of recently formed haemodialysis arteriovenous fistula: the SONAR observational cohort study. Health Technol Assess. 2024 May;28(24):1-54. doi:10.3310/YTBT4172. PMID: 38768043.
  9. Venkatakrishnan G, Kathirvel M, Sivasankara Pillai Thankamony Amma B, Muraleedharan AK, Mathew JS, Varghese CT, Nair K, Mallick S, Srinivasan DM, Gopalakrishnan U, Balakrishnan D, Othiyil Vayoth S, Surendran S. Randomized controlled trial of sustained release tacrolimus vs twice daily tacrolimus in adult living donor liver transplantation. HPB (Oxford). 2023. doi:10.1016/j.hpb.2023.10.017. PMID: 37940407.
  10. PancreasGroup.org Collaborative (Manikandan Kathirvel). Pancreatic surgery outcomes: multicentre prospective snapshot study in 67 countries. British Journal of Surgery. 2023. doi:10.1093/bjs/znad330.
  11. Staubli SM, Raptis DA, Ghani S, Davidson BR, Fusai GK, Imber C, Iype S, Nasralla D, Pissanou T, Rahman S, Sharma D, Tinguely P, Haddad F, Dodd M, Dann C, Walker D, Pollok JM; Royal Free Hospital London HPB Team (Manikandan Kathirvel). Author Correction: Management of patients at the hepatopancreatobiliary unit of a London teaching hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. Scientific Reports. 2023;13:17549. doi:10.1038/s41598-023-44594-6.
  12. Pollok JM, Tinguely P, Berenguer M, Niemann CU, Raptis DA, Spiro M; ERAS4OLT.org Collaborative (Manikandan Kathirvel). Enhanced recovery for liver transplantation: recommendations from the 2022 International Liver Transplantation Society consensus conference. Lancet Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2023 Jan;8(1):81-94.
  13. Shaker TM, Eason JD, Davidson BR, Barth RN, Pirenne J, Imventarza O, Spiro M, Raptis DA, Fung J; ERAS4OLT Working Group (Manikandan Kathirvel). Which cava anastomotic techniques are optimal regarding immediate and short-term outcomes after liver transplantation? Clin Transplant. 2022.
  14. Mallick S, Kathirvel M, Nair K, Durairaj MS, Varghese CT, Thankamony Amma BSP, Balakrishnan D, Gopalakrishnan U, Othiyil Vayoth S, Surendran S. Randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial analyzing the effect of synbiotics following living donor liver transplantation (PREPRO trial). J Hepatobiliary Pancreat Sci. 2022.
  15. Kathirvel M, Nasralla D, Iype S, Tzerbinis H, Crick K, Cortes Cerisuelo M, Pollok JM. Salvage of a right-extended split liver graft using ex situ normothermic machine perfusion—A new therapeutic horizon. Transplantation. 2022;106:e320-e321.
  16. Ghazaly M, Sethi P, Kathirvel M, Tiwari NA, Thillai M, Allison M, Upponi S, Watson CJ, Praseedom RK, Gibbs P, Saeb-Parsy K. Risk for arterial thrombosis after liver transplantation with hepatic artery reconstruction. BJS Open. 2022.
  17. Mathew JS, Durairaj MS, Mallick S, Nair K, Kathirvel M, Varghese CT, Chandran B, Thankamony Amma BSP, Menon RN, Balakrishnan D, Gopalakrishnan U, Sudhindran S. Middle hepatic vein reconstruction in adult live donor liver transplantation: a randomized clinical trial. British Journal of Surgery. 2021.
  18. Kathirvel M, Mallick S, Sethi P, Thillai M, Durairaj MS, Nair K, Sunny A, Mathew JS, Varghese CT, Chandran B, Thankamony Amma BSP, Menon RN, Balakrishnan D, Gopalakrishnan U, Sudhindran S. Randomized trial of steroid-free immunosuppression with basiliximab induction in adult live donor liver transplantation. HPB (Oxford). 2021.
  19. Mallick S, Nair K, Thillai M, Kathirvel M, Sethi P, Srinivasan MD, Mathew JS, Binoj ST, Mohammed ZU, Menon RN, Balakrishnan D, Gopalakrishnan U, Sudheer OV, Dhar P, Sudhindran S. Liver transplantation in acute liver failure – A 10-year experience. J Clin Exp Hepatol. 2020.
  20. Kathirvel M, Sivakumar A, Jayalakshmi J, Prabakaran V, Govindan VK. Diabetic foot ulcer and multidrug-resistant organisms: prevalence and bacteriological profile. New Indian Journal of Surgery. 2018.
  21. Kathirvel M, Prabakaran V, Jayalakshmi J, Sivakumar A, Govindan VK. Risk factors for diabetic foot infection with multidrug-resistant microorganisms in South India. International Surgery Journal. 2018.
  22. Mathew JS, Kathirvel M, Kumar KY, Binoj ST, Balakrishnan D, Gopalakrishnan U, Menon RN, Dhar P, Sudheer OV, Aneesh S, Sudhindran S. Biliary complications among live donors following living donor liver transplantation. The Surgeon. 2017.

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