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Heart-Surgery Pioneer DeBakey, 99, Dies

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The Associated Press

Published: July 13, 2008

HOUSTON - 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 Friday night at The Methodist Hospital in Houston from "natural causes," according to a statement issued early Saturday by Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital.

DeBakey counted world leaders among his patients and helped transform Baylor 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.

"There is no question that he was one of the pioneers of cardiovascular surgery in the last half of the 20th century," Denton Cooley, president and surgeon-in-chief at the Texas Heart Institute in Houston and longtime DeBakey rival, said Saturday.

Cooley said one of DeBakey's greatest legacies is "that he influenced so many students to pursue careers in cardiovascular surgery."

While still in medical school in 1932, DeBakey invented the roller pump, which became the major component of the heart-lung machine that first allowed open-heart surgery. The machine takes over the function of the heart and lungs during an operation.

It was the start of a lifetime of innovation. The surgical procedures that DeBakey developed once were the wonders of the medical world. Today, they are commonplace in most hospitals. He also was a pioneer in the effort to develop artificial hearts and heart pumps to assist patients waiting for transplants.

Saturday, former colleagues and other medical professionals remembered DeBakey as a "medical statesman" and perhaps the world's most prominent doctor in the second half of the 20th century.

"He took risks that others might not take to advance medicine and to prove the value of the procedures," said Bobby R. Alford, chancellor of the Baylor College of Medicine. "He had impeccable judgment."

"Millions of people are alive today because of the prior work of Dr. DeBakey for the past 60 years," said Marc Boom, executive vice president of The Methodist Hospital.

DeBakey was the first to perform replacement of arterial aneurysms and obstructive lesions in the mid-1950s. He developed bypass pumps and connections to replace excised segments of diseased arteries. In 1966, he was the first to successfully use a partial artificial heart - a left ventricular bypass pump.

He performed more than 60,000 heart surgeries during his 70-year career, The Methodist Hospital said. His patients ranged from penniless laborers to such famous figures as the Duke of Windsor, the Shah of Iran, King Hussein of Jordan 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."

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