At age 23, while still in medical school at Tulane University, DeBakey developed the roller pump, the significance of which was not realized until 20 years later when it became an essential component of the heart-lung machine. The pump provided a continuous flow of blood during operations. This, in turn, made open-heart surgery possible. With his mentor, Alton Ochsner, he postulated in 1939 a strong link between smoking and carcinoma of the lung. DeBakey was one of the first to perform coronary artery bypass surgery, and in 1953 he performed the first successful carotid endarterectomy. A pioneer in the development of an artificial heart, DeBakey was the first to use an external heart pump successfully in a patient – a left ventricular bypass pump.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 13:05:15 +0000
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