Pioneering heart surgeon Michael Debakey dies at 99
Dr Michael DeBakey, the world-famous cardiovascular surgeon who pioneered such now-common procedures as bypass surgery and invented a host of devices to help heart patients, has died. He was 99.
DeBakey died on Friday night at The Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, from “natural causes”, said Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital.
DeBakey counted world leaders among his patients and helped turn Baylor from a provincial school into one of the nation’s great medical institutions.
“Dr DeBakey’s reputation brought many people into this institution, and he treated them all: heads of state, entertainers, businessmen and presidents, as well as people with no titles and no means,” said Ron Girotto, president of The Methodist Hospital System.
Girotto said the surgeon “has improved the human condition and touched the lives of generations to come”.
While still in medical school in 1932, he invented the roller pump, which became the major component of the heart-lung machine, beginning the era of open-heart surgery. The machine takes over the function of the heart and lungs during surgery.
It was only a start of a lifetime of innovation. The surgical procedures that DeBakey developed once were the wonders of the medical world. Today, they are commonplace procedures in most hospitals.
He also was a pioneer in the effort to develop artificial hearts and heart pumps to assist patients waiting for transplants, and helped create more than 70 surgical instruments.
In early 2006, DeBakey underwent surgery for a damaged aorta – a procedure he had developed.
In a rare interview published later that year, DeBakey gave The New York Times details of the operation, performed when he was 97.
“It is a miracle,” DeBakey said. “I really should not be here.” He said he at first gambled that his aorta would heal on its own and refused to be admitted to a hospital, and was unresponsive and near death when his doctors and his wife decided to proceed, despite his age. He then spent several months in the hospital.
As he recovered, DeBakey told his doctors he was glad they had operated, despite his earlier refusals.
“If they hadn’t done it, I’d be dead,” he said.
In a 1985 interview, DeBakey said: “I’m accused of being a perfectionist and, in the way it’s usually defined, I guess I am. In medicine, and certainly in surgery, you have to be as perfect as possible. There’s no room for mistakes.”
DeBakey was the first to perform replacement of arterial aneurysms and obstructive lesions in the mid-1950s. He later developed bypass pumps and connections to replace excised segments of diseased arteries.
A tireless worker and a stern taskmaster, DeBakey literally had scores of patients under his care at any one time, helping to establish his name as a leading cardiovascular surgeon. He performed more than 60,000 heart surgeries during his 70 year career, The Methodist Hospital said.
“Man was born to work hard,” he said.
His patients ranged from penniless peasants from the Third World to such famous figures as the Duke of Windsor, the Shah of Iran, King Hussein of Jordan, Turkish President Turgut Ozal, Nicaraguan Leader Violetta Chamorro and Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon.
But he said celebrities didn’t get special treatment on the operating table: “Once you incise the skin, you find that they are all very similar.”
He made headlines again in 1996 when he flew to Moscow to help examine ailing Russian President Boris Yeltsin and served as a consultant when he underwent surgery.
DeBakey was born on September 7, 1908, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the son of Lebanese immigrants.
