Arkansas’ surgeons remember DeBakey
Posted on Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Dr. Frederick Meadors heard horror stories about Dr. Michael DeBakey when he first went to Baylor College of Medicine as a young medical intern in 1983.
DeBakey, then the college’s chancellor and chairman of the department of surgery, was known as an intense teacher and a strict disciplinarian who slept only four hours a night. Shortly after arriving on campus, Meadors heard a resident describe DeBakey.
“He said, ‘ There’s only one person who can stare at you harder than Dr. DeBakey, and that’s Charles Manson, ’” said Meadors, a cardiovascular surgeon at St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center.
DeBakey was an internationally known heart surgeon who trained hundreds of surgeons, did numerous groundbreaking surgeries and invented many devices and instruments commonly used in heart surgeries today. He died of natural causes at age 99 late Friday at The Methodist Hospital in Houston.
Some of his most famous patients included comedian Jerry Lewis, former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and U. S. Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.
Arkansas heart surgeons interviewed Monday described DeBakey as an “iconic figure” in the field who made numerous contributions to medicine that have saved lives around the globe.
“He was the guy who made heart surgery what it is today,” said Dr. C. D. Williams, cardiovascular surgeon at Arkansas Heart Hospital in Little Rock. “Everyone else just kind of followed along.” DeBakey came to Little Rock in October 2004 for a news conference at Arkansas Children’s Hospital about the DeBakey VAD Child, a 4-ounce “ventricular assist device,” or heart pump for children with heart failure. DeBakey developed it with the help of NASA engineers, and a 14-year-old Cabot boy was the second child in the world to have one implanted to keep him alive until he could have a heart transplant.
Then 96, DeBakey said patients with the device “can’t climb mountains, but they can dress themselves. They can be independent. They can get around and be a lot more comfortable,” according to an Arkansas-Democrat Gazette article.
Dr. Robert M. B. Jaquiss, professor and director of the pediatric cardiovascular program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said he met DeBakey about 12 years ago and was “impressed by his vitality and energy.” In addition to helping develop heart pumps for children and adults, DeBakey was a pioneer in efforts to develop the first artificial hearts, Jaquiss said.
He designed more than 70 surgical instruments, including clamps to close arteries during surgery. He used his wife’s sewing machine to sew a prototype of the first artificial artery using Dacron fabric purchased at Foley’s department store in downtown Houston.
He also helped develop the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital or M. A. S. H. units the military used in the Vietnam and Korean wars to treat critically injured soldiers on the front lines.
As a medical student in 1932, DeBakey invented the roller pump, a major component of the heart-lung machine that keeps patients alive during open-heart surgery.
“He gave us a lot of the tools that we use every day,” said Williams, who has been in practice since 1973.
The son of Lebanese immigrants, DeBakey’s career spanned 70 years, during which he’s said to have performed more than 60, 000 surgeries. In 1964, he and associates performed the first successful heart bypass surgery, and in 1968 he led a team of surgeons in a groundbreaking multiple transplant surgery. The surgeons successfully transplanted the heart, kidneys and one lung of a donor into four recipients.
“He’s made a lifetime of contributions to cardiothoracic surgery all the way from developing some of the initial operations in the 1950 s and 1960 s,” said Dr. John Ransom, surgical director of the heart transplant and mechanical circulatory support program at Baptist Medical Center in Little Rock. “He made a lot of great contributions to heart and aortic surgery.
“ It’d be hard for anyone to match the contributions that he’s made to the field of cardiovascular surgery,” Ransom said.
Meadors spent seven years at Baylor under DeBakey, as an intern, resident and then faculty member from 1983 to 1990.
As part of DeBakey’s training, Meadors and other interns spent a stint working 60 days straight, 24 hours a day in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Interns were given a small cubicle in a converted patient room to sleep in, but spent most of their time overseeing patients in the 55-bed unit.
“It was brutally hard,” Meadors said. “The sleep deprivation was very difficult.... The longest I ever slept was four hours.” When one intern who had broken his ankle wanted to leave because it was time to get his foot cast removed, DeBakey refused. He told the intern to get someone to come to the ICU to take it off.
Meadors said it was a “rite of passage” for interns at the college. DeBakey believed young doctors had to follow patients from admission through diagnosis, treatment and recovery to fully understand conditions they would treat throughout their careers.
Outside of medicine, DeBakey enjoyed reading, was well-versed in literature and poetry, and is said to have read the Encyclopedia Britannica from cover to cover.
“He was one of those rare people in history who was in the right place at the right time to really make a difference,” Meadors said.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
