Michael DeBakey: The New Orleans Med Student Who Saved a Million Hearts

The Man Who Fixed the Human Heart

Michael Ellis DeBakey was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, in 1908, the son of Lebanese immigrants who had settled in the Cajun prairie. He came to New Orleans for medical school at Tulane University, and it was there — in the surgical labs of the old Tulane Medical Center — that he began the work that would make him the most important cardiovascular surgeon in history.

As a medical student in the 1930s, DeBakey invented the roller pump — a device that could continuously pump blood. It seemed like a clever student project at the time. Two decades later, that same roller pump became the critical component of the heart-lung machine, the device that made open-heart surgery possible. A gadget built by a kid in a New Orleans lab changed the entire trajectory of modern medicine.

The Pioneer

DeBakey's list of firsts reads like the entire history of heart surgery. He performed the first successful carotid endarterectomy — removing blockages from the arteries that feed the brain. He was among the first to perform coronary artery bypass surgery. He developed artificial arteries made from Dacron, a synthetic fabric he chose after browsing a department store in Houston. He performed the first successful use of a partial artificial heart. He pioneered the surgical treatment of aortic aneurysms. He developed the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital concept — the MASH unit — during World War II.

Over a career spanning more than seventy years, DeBakey performed more than 60,000 cardiovascular procedures. He operated on heads of state, kings, and celebrities from around the world. His patients included the Duke of Windsor, the Shah of Iran, and Boris Yeltsin. He was, for decades, the man you went to when you needed the impossible done to your heart.

New Orleans Roots

Though DeBakey spent most of his career at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, his formation was entirely Louisiana. He grew up watching his mother cook Lebanese food in the kitchen, developing the manual dexterity and patience that would serve him in the operating room. He learned surgery at Tulane under the great Alton Ochsner — another New Orleans medical giant — and the precision and innovation that characterized his career were seeded in those years on the banks of the Mississippi.

DeBakey worked until he was in his nineties. He died in 2008 at the age of 99, having personally saved more human lives through surgical innovation than perhaps any physician in history. The roller pump he built as a student in New Orleans is still used in operating rooms around the world today.