DeBakey, Michael Ellis (1908- )

US cardiologist and surgeon. In 1932, he invented a major component of the heart-lung machine, later becoming proficient in heart transplant surgery and treating aortic aneurysms. He was president (1969) and then chancellor (1978) of the Baylor College of Medicine in Waco, Texas.

He was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana. It was while he was still a medical student that he invented the heart-lung machine component that made open-heart surgery possible. He joined the faculty at Tulane University in 1937. During World War II he helped the Surgeon General develop mobile army surgical hospitals (MASH units). He joined Baylor University's medical school (1948). His treatment of aortic aneurysms involved replacing the affected section with a graft of blood vessels. He performed the first of 12 heart transplants in 1968, but the procedure was halted until 1984 when controls on organ rejection were improved. A prolific writer, he published The Living Heart (1977) and The Living Heart Diet (1984).