Michael E. DeBakey

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Michael DeBakey

Dr. Michael Ellis DeBakey
Born September 7, 1908(1908-09-07) (age 99)
Lake Charles, Louisiana,
United States

Michael Ellis DeBakey (born as Michel Dabaghi)[1]; September 7, 1908) is a world renowned surgeon, innovator, medical educator, and international medical statesman.[2] DeBakey is currently chancellor emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and director of The DeBakey Heart Center of Baylor and the Methodist Hospital.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Michael Ellis DeBakey was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to Lebanese-American immigrants Shaker and Raheeja DeBakey.

[edit] Medical Career

DeBakey received his BSc degree and MD degree from Tulane University in New Orleans. He remained in New Orleans to complete his internship and residency in surgery at Charity Hospital. DeBakey completed his surgical fellowships at the University of Strasbourg, France, under Professor René Leriche and at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, under Professor Martin Kirschner. Returning to Tulane Medical School, he served on the surgical faculty from 1937 to 1948. From 1942 to 1946, he was on military leave as a member of the Surgical Consultants’ Division in the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army, and in 1945 he became its Director and received the U. S. Army Legion of Merit. DeBakey helped develop the mobile army surgical hospital (MASH) units and later helped establish the Veteran’s Administration Medical Center Research System. He joined the Baylor College of Medicine faculty in 1948, serving as Chairman of the Department of Surgery until 1993. DeBakey was president of the college from 1969 to 1979, served as Chancellor from 1979 to January 1996, he was then named Chancellor Emeritus. He is also Olga Keith Wiess and Distinguished Service Professor in the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine and Director of the DeBakey Heart Center for research and public education at Baylor College of Medicine and the Methodist Hospital.

DeBakey's ability to bring his professional knowledge to bear on public policy earned DeBakey a reputation as a medical statesman. He was a member of the medical advisory committee of the Hoover Commission and was chairman of the President's Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer and Stroke during the Johnson Administration. He has worked tirelessly in numerous capacities to improve national and international standards of health care. Among his numerous consultative appointments is a three-year membership on the National Advisory Heart and Lung Council of the National Institutes of Health.

[edit] Medical Pioneer

At age 23, while still in medical school at Tulane University, DeBakey invented the roller pump, the significance of which was not realized for another 20 years, when it became an essential component of the heart-lung machine. The pump provided a continuous flow of blood during operating procedures, this in turn made open-heart surgery possible.

With his mentor, Alton Ochsner, he postulated, in 1939, a strong link between smoking and carcinoma of the lung. DeBakey was one of the first to perform coronary artery bypass surgery, and in 1953 he performed the first successful carotid endarterectomy. A pioneer in the development of an artificial heart, DeBakey was the first to use a heart pump successfully in a patient

DeBakey pioneered the use of Dacron® grafts to replace or repair blood vessels. In 1958, to counteract narrowing of an artery caused by an endarterectomy, DeBakey performed the first successful patch-graft angioplasty. This procedure involved patching the slit in the artery from an endarterectomy with a Dacron® or vein graft. The patch widened the artery so that when it closed the channel of the artery returned to normal size. The DeBakey artificial graft is now used around the world to replace or repair blood vessels.

In the 1960s, DeBakey and his team of surgeons were among the first to record surgeries on film. A camera operator would lie prone atop a surgical film stand made to Dr. DeBakey's specifications and record a surgeon's eye view of the operating area. The camera and lights were positioned within 3 to 4 feet of the operative field yet did not interfere with the surgical team.[3]

DeBakey worked together with Dr. Denton Cooley, while they both practiced at Baylor College of Medicine. According to the April 18, 1969 issue of Time magazine, they had a disagreement associated with Cooley's apparently unauthorized implantation of the first artificial heart in a human. The disagreement turned into a bitter feud that lasted for decades; the two men reconciled only in 2007,[4] but made it public by inviting him at the presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal.[5]

To the amazement of his colleagues and patients, DeBakey continued to practice medicine into an age well after most others have retired. In 1969, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. During the same year, the Baylor College of Medicine separated from Baylor University under his direction. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan awarded him the National Medal of Science. On October 2, 2007, legislation passed to award DeBakey Congressional Gold Medal.[6] Dr. DeBakey has operated on more than 60,000 patients, including Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who called him "a magician of the heart" after Dr. DeBakey and a team of American cardiothoracic surgeons, including Dr. George Noon, supervised quintuple bypass surgery performed on Yeltsin by Russian surgeons in 1996. [7]

Both the DeBakey High School for Health Professions and the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston in the Texas Medical Center in Houston are named after him. Several atraumatic vascular surgical clamps and forceps that he introduced also bear his name.

DeBakey still practices medicine to this day. In 2008, Michael DeBakey will be 100 years old. His contributions to the field of medicine will have spanned the better part of 75 years. He's a Health Care Hall of Famer and a Lasker Luminary. He's a recipient of The United Nations Lifetime Achievement Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction and The National Medal of Science. He was given the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Foundation for Biomedical Research and in 2000 was cited as a "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress. On 23rd April, 2008 he received the Congressional Gold Medal from President George W. Bush.[8][9]

[edit] Recent Health Issues

On December 31, 2005, at age 97, DeBakey suffered an aortic dissection, the very condition that his pioneering procedure was designed to treat. He was hospitalized at The Methodist Hospital in Houston. Dr. DeBakey initially resisted the surgical option, but as his health deteriorated, the Houston Methodist Hospital Ethics Committee approved the operation; on February 9–February 10 he became the oldest patient ever to undergo the surgery for which he was responsible. The operation lasted seven hours. After a complicated postoperative course that required eight months in the hospital, at a cost of over one million dollars, Dr. DeBakey was released in September 2006 and has returned to good health.[7] He was present at Baylor College of Medicine for the groundbreaking opening of the new Michael E. DeBakey Library and Museum on October 18, 2006.

[edit] Honors

  • Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Academy of Medical Films
  • American Heart Association (AHA)
  • Children Uniting Nations
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Foundation for Biomedical Research
  • International College of Angiology
  • International Health and Medical Film Festival
  • Research! America
  • Tulane Medical Alumni Association
  • U.S. Army Legion of Merit (1945)
  • American Medical Association Hektoen Gold Medal (1954 and 1970)
  • Rudolph Matas Award in Vascular Surgery (1954)
  • International Society of Surgery Distinguished Service Award (1958)
  • Leriche Award (1959)
  • American Medical Association Distinguished Service Award (1959)
  • Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research (1963)
  • American Medical Association Billings Gold Medal Exhibit Award (1967)
  • American Heart Association Gold Heart Award (1968)
  • Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Academy of Sciences 50th Anniversary Jubilee Medal (1973)
  • Veterans of Foreign Wars Commander-in-Chief’s Medal and Citation (1980)
  • American Surgical Association Distinguished Service Award (1981)
  • Academy of Surgical Research Markowitz Award (1988)
  • Association of American Medical Colleges Special Recognition Award (1988)
  • American Legion Distinguished Service Award (1990)
  • Premio Giuseppe Corradi Award for Surgery and Scientific Research (1997)
  • Russian Military Medical Academy, Boris Petrovsky International Surgeons Award and First Laureate of the Boris Petrovsky Gold Medal (1997)
  • John P. McGovern Compleat Physician Award (1999)
  • Russian Academy of Sciences Foreign Member (1999)
  • Texas Senate and House of Representatives, Adoption of resolutions honoring Dr. DeBakey for 50 years of medical practice in Texas (1999)
  • American Medical Association Virtual Mentor Award (2000)
  • American Philosophical Society Jonathan Rhoads Medal (2000)
  • Library of Congress Bicentennial Living Legend Award (2000)
  • Villanova University Mendel Medal Award (2001)
  • Houston Hall of Fame (2001)
  • NASA Invention of the Year Award (2001)
  • MUSC[1] "Lindbergh-Carrel Prize"[2](2002)
  • Congressional Gold Medal (April 23, 2008)

[edit] Publications

[edit] References

  1. ^ according to the American Lebanese Medical Association (ALMA)
  2. ^ BCM DeBakey Bio
  3. ^ DeBakey Surgical Innovations
  4. ^ The Feud
  5. ^ Heart surgeon DeBakey receives high honor
  6. ^ Sen. Hutchison’s Bill to Award DeBakey the Congressional Gold Medal Passes Congress
  7. ^ a b Altman, Lawrence K.. "The Man on the Table Was 97, but He Devised the Surgery", New York Times, 2006-12-25. Retrieved on 2006-12-25. 
  8. ^ Heart surgeon DeBakey receives high honor
  9. ^ Houston's DeBakey gets congressional medal in D.C.

"An Act of Desperation." Time. April 18, 1969.

[edit] External links