Portrait of Dr. Michael DeBakey

Michael DeBakey built Houston into a heart surgery capital

ByYvette Okafor

Photo: Unknown, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Michael Ellis DeBakey was born in 1908 in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to Lebanese immigrant parents. While still a medical student at Tulane, he invented a roller pump that later became part of the heart-lung machine.

During World War II, he worked in the Army surgeon general’s office and helped develop the concept that became the mobile army surgical hospital.

Houston

In 1948, DeBakey moved to Houston to chair the surgery department at Baylor University College of Medicine, then a young school in the new Texas Medical Center. He built it into a major center for training and research.

He developed techniques for repairing aneurysms and blocked arteries, including the use of Dacron grafts, which he made on his wife’s sewing machine. He performed early coronary bypass operations and worked on artificial hearts and heart pumps.

Fame and patients

DeBakey treated presidents, royalty and celebrities, and patients from around the world came to Houston for surgery. He advised presidents on health policy and pushed for the creation of the National Library of Medicine.

Later years

In 2005, at age 97, DeBakey suffered an aortic dissection and underwent a version of the operation he had developed. He survived and received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2008. He died later that year, just short of his 100th birthday. Houston’s Methodist hospital and the VA Medical Center bear his name.

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