MASH unit founder dies at 99

The world’s most famous heart surgeon, Michael E. DeBakey, died this month aged ninety-nine.
Dr DeBakey’s career spanned seventy years, sixty of which he spent at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, where he passed away on July 11.

He was recognised as the father of cardiovascular surgery whose pioneering spirit earned him several firsts in heart and blood vessel surgery.
He was the first to perform coronary artery bypass grafting in humans, first to perform carotid endarterectomy, first to develop and use ventricular assist devices to aid the failing heart, and first to use Dacron artificial grafts, which he devised.
Dr DeBakey was also the first to develop Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units in World War II and was instrumental in establishing the National Library of Medicine in the US, the world’s largest and most prestigious repository of medical records.
During his career, he performed over 60,000 heart surgeries, routinely working 18-hour days, and continued to operate into his nineties. His work was recognised with numerous awards and honorary degrees from institutions all over the globe.
In 1999 he was awarded the United Nations Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2000, he was recognised by the Library of Congress as a ‘Living Legend’. He continued to live for another decade after that, despite undergoing and surviving complex surgery himself to repair a leaking thoracic aortic aneurysm when he was 96 – the surgical technique he had devised years earlier.
Earlier this year, Dr Michael Ellis DeBakey was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by President George Bush — the highest civilian award bestowed by the US Congress and one of only 196 awarded since 1776. With this award, he is in the company of George Washington, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Pope John Paul II.
Born in Louisiana in 1908, Dr Michael DeBakey arguably raised the standards in medical care throughout the world through his influential work and stunning achievements over almost one hundred years of productive life.