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July 12, 2008 -- 7:30pm EDT (updated) Passing of an Era -- Michael DeBakey (1908-2008) When producing the documentary, "Vascular Pioneers: Evolution of a Specialty", I was lucky enough to locate this two-hour interview, and even more lucky, to get permission to include parts of it in the program (which also included Bill Blaisdell). As I sat in my editing room, screening the 120 minutes, I was astounded at the detail and breadth of this man's experience. His stories about his mother's sewing classes (where he learned the technique that would revolutionize vascular surgery!) to his dinner with General Patton in Patton's French chateau during WWII, to his surgery on the Duke of Windsor who, like Arethra Franklin, refused to fly and took a train from NYC to Houston -- I was constantly reminded of what an amazing impact this one human had on the field of medicine. And I kept saying to myself, "This man was 87 years old when the interview was taped!! -- and he remembers more than most of us ever will experience in several lifetimes!" The era that is passing, referred to in the title, concerns the current and future treatment of aneurysms and other vascular disease, which is more and more being performed using an endovascular or minimally-invasive approach, using wires, balloons, stents and newer devices, without open surgery. This transition has been occurring over the past two decades -- trials are now ongoing in which heart valves are being replaced percutaneously, with a catheter through the arteries and into the chambers of the heart -- no open heart required. But none of this could have existed without the courageous and pioneering work of the first wave of modern surgeons -- and DeBakey was right in front. You can see a short clip from the interview with Dr. DeBakey, describing how he invented the synthetic Dacron graft, in our article about him . |
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These
two photos of Michael DeBakey, taken half-a-century apart, give
a narrow sense of the wide span of his life. The first, taken (we
believe) in the 40's, shows a young surgeon, filled with possibilities
-- possibilities which, I might add, were mostly fulfilled. The
second was from an interview, conducted in December 1995 by F.
William Blaisdell, MD, FACS with Dr. DeBakey, who was Blaisdell's
mentor and teacher.