January/February 2011 - SASSiT

Michael Ellis DeBakey was born as Michel Dabaghi (later Anglicized to DeBakey) in Louisiana to
Lebanese immigrants. DeBakey graduated from Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans in
1932. He 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.
‘DeBakey had a machine
shop right outside the
operating room. He
regularly consulted with
an engineer during and
after procedures about
the design of
instruments’
Michael Ellis DeBakey
September 7, 1908 – July 11, 2008
World-renowned Lebanese-American cardiac surgeon, innovator,
scientist, medical educator, and international medical statesman.
During a decorated five-decade medical career, it is without
hyperbole that Dr. Michael E. DeBakey earned the right to be
named as one of the greatest surgeons of the 20th century.
While he was in medical school DeBakey conceived of the
roller pump, the central idea of the heart-lung machine. The
very notion that the heart can be temporarily replaced by a
machine set the stage for a host of medical innovations—from
bypass surgeries and heart transplants to artificial hearts—
and a fundamental change in approach to heart treatment,
heart health and the prevention of heart disease.
DeBakey ushered in, and was often at the forefront of, medical innovations that have saved
millions of lives. He performed over 60,000 operations himself. Chief among these techniques
was arterial bypass and arterial reconstruction. He mastered ways of patching and grafting,
bypassing and re-organizing arteries. He finally put down his scalpel in 1998 at age 90.
Kenneth L. Mattox, chief of surgery at Baylor-affiliated Ben Taub Hospital in the Texas Medical
Center, Houston, has no doubts that his mentor and long-time colleague did that many
operations. “We were doing operations in four different rooms and he would move from room to
room,” Mattox recalls. In the evening, “he sent out for food and we ate between cases.” At 11
p.m., the entire team of residents, nurses, anesthesiologists, everyone, was exhausted, Mattox
says. “I remember Dr. DeBakey sticking his head out a door and saying, ‘Doesn’t anybody else
out there want an operation? We’re just getting warmed up.’”
Mattox also remembers that DeBakey had a machine shop right outside the operating room. He
regularly consulted with an engineer during and after procedures about the design of
instruments. “He would look at the way an instrument fit in his hand, the way a clamp would
spring or close,” Mattox says. “He would talk to the engineer, and a week later he would have a
new instrument.”
The Next time you ask your scrub
sister for a DeBakey forceps
remember the innovative spirit of
its creator – Michael E. DeBakey.
The DeBakey
Forceps designed
with atraumatic
tips so as to
minimize trauma
to delicate tissues.
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