HOUSTON — When Dr. Michael E. DeBakey pushed forward with his groundbreaking research and maverick approach to medicine a half century ago, heart surgery was a medical marvel.
Today, in part because of his contributions, it routinely saves thousands of lives each day.
DeBakey, a world-famous cardiovascular surgeon who pioneered such now-common procedures as bypass surgery and invented a host of devices to help heart patients, died Friday night in Houston. He was 99.
According to a statement issued early Saturday by Baylor College of Medicine and Methodist Hospital, DeBakey died of "natural causes" shortly after arriving at the hospital. The hospital's heart and vascular center bears his name.
DeBakey counted world leaders among his patients and helped turn Baylor into one of the nation's great medical institutions.
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DeBakey performed more than 60,000 heart surgeries during his career and had scores of patients under his care at any one time.
Among his patients were Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, the Shah of Iran and King Hussein of Jordan and Nicaraguan leader Violetta Chamorro.
But he said celebrities didn't get special treatment on the operating table: "Once you incise the skin, you find that they are all very similar."
At an April ceremony in Washington in which DeBakey was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress' highest civilian honor, President Bush said the award placed the surgeon in the company of inventor Thomas Edison, Army doctor Walter Reed and Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine.
DeBakey was born to Lebanese immigrants on Sept. 7, 1908, in Lake Charles, La. He received his bachelor's and medical degrees from Tulane University in New Orleans.
In 1932, while in school, DeBakey invented the roller pump, which became the major component of the heart-lung machine, beginning the era of open-heart surgery. The machine takes over the function of the heart and lungs during surgery.
DeBakey would go on to help pioneer the effort to develop artificial hearts and heart pumps to assist patients waiting for transplants, and help create more than 70 surgical instruments.
DeBakey was the first to perform replacement of arterial aneurysms and obstructive lesions in the mid-1950s. He later developed bypass pumps and connections to replace excised segments of diseased arteries.
