Famous heart surgeon dies

Washington Post

Michael E. DeBakey, 99, the father of modern cardiovascular surgery, who invented scores of medical procedures and instruments, developed the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital and established what later became the Veterans Affairs hospital system, died Friday at Methodist Hospital in Houston.

The hospital did not release the cause of death, but he had heart surgery in 2006.

Over a 70-year medical career, DeBakey became one of the most influential and innovative heart surgeons in history. He changed the practice of cardiac surgery, performed the first successful heart bypass operation and is credited with saving thousands of lives.

“His legacy is holding the fragile and sacred gift of human life in his hands and returning it unbroken,” President Bush said in April, while awarding DeBakey the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation’s highest civilian honor. As a Tulane University medical student in 1932, DeBakey devised the “roller pump,” an essential component of the heart-lung machine that permitted open-heart surgery.

In the 1950s, he used his sewing skills, which he had learned from his mother when he was a boy, to patch faulty aortas by grafting. The Dacron graft is now used throughout the world on diseased arteries.

He also performed the first successful removal of a blockage of the main artery of the neck, a procedure known as an endarterectomy, which became the standard method for treating stroke. He developed a device in 1963 that helped blood to move from one chamber of the heart to another, and in 1966 he created a partial artificial heart. One of his inventions, the DeBakey Ventricular Assist Device, is an apparatus implanted into the heart to increase blood flow.

Although DeBakey stopped performing surgery at age 90, after more than 60,000 operations, his legacy lives on among the thousands of surgeons he trained, many of whom now lead hospital and medical school departments.