died a couple of days ago at the age of 99.
Dr. DeBakey
by Hortensia 4 Replies latest watchtower medical
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blondie
Note what DeBakey was reported to have said about tranplants in 1974. Did time bear him out?
*** g74 5/22 p. 30 Watching the World ***
"A Job for the Creator"
Two of the world’s most famous heart surgeons recently commented on the future of transplants.Dr. Michael E. DeBakey says: "I think the general interest as far as heart transplants is concerned has diminished greatly because of the experience that we had . . . The results were not sufficiently good to justify the effort." Dr. Denton A. Cooley observes: "Although we have been able to replace all the components of the heart, the only part we cannot replace is the heart muscle . . . It seems that is a job for the creator . . . That seems to be the frontier beyond which we have not been able to advance."
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choosing life
No, he was wrong at that time, Blondie. He did go on to perform thousands of heart operations and transplants though. I heard the figure of 60,00. He operated on presidents and foreign heads of state. Quite an accomplishment in this life.
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Hortensia
I found this:
Some of those innovations he created: the roller pump (while in med school in the 1930's) the central part of a heart-lung machine that made open heart surgery possible, the connection between smoking and lung cancer, Dacron grafts, MASH units, and techniques to repair a ruptured aorta (surgery he underwent himself at 97).
Among the over 60,000 patients he operated on in his lifetime: Marlene Dietrich, LBJ, Nixon, Boris Yeltsin, Jerry Lewis.
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snowbird
One of his relatives (a brother?) was on the faculty at the University of South Alabama, I believe.
I've tried unsuccessfully to document this.
Sylvia