TRK Varma, neurosurgeon

Film of interviews with Varma, news cuttings, video and cassette tapes from Neuro-surgery Dept, Dundee Royal Infirmary. Digital copies of VHS and cassette tapes

Mr TRK Varma was born and raised in Bangalore, southern India. He was a doctor in the British Army, having served with Montgomery in Africa and Italy during the second world war. Varma attended his hometown university and went on to work in a Delhi hospital. Having decided to become a neurosurgeon, he travelled to Liverpool with the intention of returning home after a brief period of study. Instead he spent five years there, where he met his wife Shirley, before moving on to Sheffield, and then Cardiff. He and Shirley had a daughter called Sulekha
He arrived in Dundee in 1985 to take up a position as a consultant neurosurgeon at Dundee Royal Infirmary, taking up the mantle from predecessor Joe Block. Varma worked with fellow consultant Ivan Jacobson and the two established a department recognised as one of the finest in the country.
Varma completed many groundbreaking first-of-its-kind procedures in Scotland. He started offering psychosurgery as an alternate treatment for patients suffering with severe depression in 1992. In 1996 he performed a surgery with an Operating Arm using virtual reality assistance. He also developed surgery for severe epilepsy and in 1997 became the first neurosurgeon in Scotland to fit electrical implants.
After 13 years in Dundee, TRK Varma moved south in 1998 to take up a position at the Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Liverpool, the only NHS centre dealing with Varma’s speciality

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Curator Museums & Galleries, UoD

Mr TRK Varma was born and raised in Bangalore, southern India. He was a doctor in the British Army, having served with Montgomery in Africa and Italy during the second world war. Varma attended his hometown university and went on to work in a Delhi hospital. Having decided to become a neurosurgeon, he travelled to Liverpool with the intention of returning home after a brief period of study. Instead he spent five years there, where he met his wife Shirley, before moving on to Sheffield, and then Cardiff. He and Shirley had a daughter called Sulekha
He arrived in Dundee in 1985 to take up a position as a consultant neurosurgeon at Dundee Royal Infirmary, taking up the mantle from predecessor Joe Block. Varma worked with fellow consultant Ivan Jacobson and the two established a department recognised as one of the finest in the country.
Varma completed many groundbreaking first-of-its-kind procedures in Scotland. He started offering psychosurgery as an alternate treatment for patients suffering with severe depression in 1992. In 1996 he performed a surgery with an Operating Arm using virtual reality assistance. He also developed surgery for severe epilepsy and in 1997 became the first neurosurgeon in Scotland to fit electrical implants.
After 13 years in Dundee, TRK Varma moved south in 1998 to take up a position at the Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Liverpool, the only NHS centre dealing with Varma’s speciality

Arranged and listed by Lydia MacDonald, volunteer

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Presumably held by Varma who gave the material to the Medical Museum, from which was it transferred to the Archive

Not known

Published