About the specialist
Dr. Ayyappan completed his B.VSc in 1986, M.VSc in Veterinary Surgery in 1988 and a PhD in Veterinary surgery in 1996 from Madras Veterinary College having stood first in all the programmes. His passion is surgery with special emphasis on Small animal fracture repair, skeletal deformity corrections, Joint affections and Neurology. He possesses 33 years of clinical and teaching experience in small animal surgery.
Dr Ayyappan was the first veterinarian from India to complete a 2 month AO small animal orthopaedic training at the Small animal hospital, University of Zurich, Switzerland in 1994. He is also the first veterinarian from India to complete the basic, advanced and special training in small animal orthopaedic surgery at AO-International, Davos, Switzerland in 1994, 1995 and 1999. Dr. Ayyappan subsequently completed a two year Clinical Post-doctoral fellowship in Orthopaedic surgery at the Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, Purdue University, USA from October, 2000-August, 2002.
He has authored 82 clinical publications and 25 popular articles on pet practice. He is a recipient of 28 gold medals in his academic career and has guided 6 masters and 3 Ph.D students. Dr. Ayyappan is a well-known speaker and has presented numerous guest lectures and attended major international and national conferences and symposiums.
Dr. Ayyappan completed the 9th Annual Complete Course in External Skeletal Fixation at the college of Veterinary Medicine, Purdue University, USA in 2001. He was also a consultant small animal veterinarian at a superspeciality hospital in Singapore for 2 months in 2009. Dr. Ayyappan subsequently completed the advanced AOVET fellowship training in small animal orthopaedic surgery at the Cummings school of Veterinary medicine, Tufts University, USA in from December 2012 to January 2013.
Dr. Ayyappan was the first Veterinarian to adapt and establish the philosophy and principles of internal fixation of fractures and pioneer the introduction of numerous small animal orthopaedic techniques using the AOVET principles in this country. Dr. Ayyappan is trained in hip evaluation procedure for evaluation and diagnosis of hip dysplasia in dogs. Dr Ayyappan has mentored and trained numerous students and veterinarians throughout India in the basic concepts of small animal orthopaedics. His other interest includes soft tissue surgeries as well.
Dr. Ayyappan organised and co-chaired the Basic AOVET international course in small animal fracture management in 2012 which was conducted for the first time in India. Dr. Ayyappan also worked as a small animal orthopaedic surgeon and a faculty in the School of Veterinary Medicine, The University of the West Indies for three years. He was responsible for teaching orthopaedic surgery and neurology to DVM students. Dr. Ayyappan has completed courses in Minimally Invasive Orthopaedic surgery in Las Vegas, USA ( 2016), Masters course in corrective osteotomy in Orlando, USA( 2016), Advanced courses in Spinal surgery in LAS Vegas, USA( 2014,2017) and a Total Hip Replacement course, Boston( 2017) and the surgical approaches course in 2021 at Las Vegas, USA
Dr. Ayyappan is an AOVET member and Life member of Indian society for Veterinary surgery and International society for the advancement of canine practice and a Board member of the National Veterinary Foundation, India. He was awarded life time achievement award by the Indian society for veterinary surgery for excellence in Veterinary Orthopaedics in 2023 and NVF Guru Ratna award 2023 by the NVF foundation, India for outstanding teaching.