A surgeon, DeBakey was still in medical school when he developed the roller pump, which allowed blood to be pumped without touching it. The pump became the core of the heart-lung machine, which made heart surgery possible.
It didn’t stop there: DeBakey co-wrote the first scientific paper linking smoking with lung cancer (1939); performed the first coronary bypass (1964); performed the first carotid endarterectomy (1953); invented the Dacron arterial graft so that aortic aneurisms could be repaired, and performed the first such surgery (1954); performed the first multiple-organ transplant (1968); and invented the mobile army surgical hospital (1945, immortalized by the book, movie and TV show M*A*S*H).
He is thought by many to be “the greatest surgeon ever,” said the American Medical Association. He ended up operating on at least 60,000 people, and developed techniques and equipment that has saved millions. When he was 97, he suffered an aneurism of his own aorta — and was saved by surgeons using his surgical technique and the Dacron graft he invented. He died July 11 at 99.