Dr. P.J.Geevarghese is more popularly known as 'The Father of Pancreatic Diabetes'. A pioneer in the field, he has reported the largest series of cases of Fibrocalculous Pancreatitis Diabetes (FCPD) from Kerala. FCPD is a secondary form of diabetes due to tropical chronic pancreatitis (TCP) and occurs exclusively in developing countries of the tropical world.
Dr Geevarghese initially joined in the Dept of Internal Medicine at Trivandrum Medical College and later retired as the Professor and Head of the same department at Kottayam Medical College. He has documented more than 1,700 FCPD cases in his monographs and happens to be one of the largest series reported in the world. In his time, i.e. in the 1960's, FCPD constituted about 29.3% of total diabetes registered in Kerala and 1.35 % of the total inpatients in Kottayam Medical College.
Due to the uniqueness of this disease and its peculiar geographic prevalence, ICMR started an ICMR Cell in the Trivandrum Medical College in the 1960s to study the disease in detail. Dr. Geevarghese and colleagues, with the support of this ICMR cell, succeeded in characterizing the clinical features of the disease and published several articles related to the clinical features, the pathology and surgical treatment of this peculiar disease.
Courtesy: We are grateful to Dr.Dayananda Babu(Professor of Surgery) and Dr.K.P Paulose(Professor of Medicine) for helping us with the picture and the details.
Dr. P.J.Geevarghese is more popularly known as 'The Father of Pancreatic Diabetes'. A pioneer in the field, he has reported the largest series of cases of Fibrocalculous Pancreatitis Diabetes (FCPD) from Kerala. FCPD is a secondary form of diabetes due to tropical chronic pancreatitis (TCP) and occurs exclusively in developing countries of the tropical world.