Dr. Michael DeBakey

Tuesday, July 15, 2008 | 2:04 a.m.

In a career that spanned eight decades, cardiac surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey created a rich legacy that has literally given new life to millions of people.

DeBakey, who died Friday at the age of 99, was a medical pioneer, an inventor and an innovator. His best-known and perhaps most important achievements were lifesaving coronary artery bypass surgery and the first successful use of an artificial heart pump. He also created a variety of medical devices, including the pump used in heart and lung machines and Dacron artificial grafts used in bypass surgeries.

DeBakey wrote or co-wrote more than 1,300 articles and a handful of books. Among that work was a study published in 1939 that was the first to link smoking to lung cancer. That was 25 years before the surgeon general linked the two.

He was recognized internationally for his work and traveled extensively, lecturing, consulting and performing surgeries. In 1996 he was called in to evaluate then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who had been told he wouldn’t survive a needed bypass operation. DeBakey thought otherwise, and a successful surgery saved Yeltsin’s presidency and his life.

DeBakey was awarded the Presidential Freedom Award and the Congressional Gold Medal, the government’s two highest civilian honors. The Army awarded him the Legion of Merit medal for modernizing medical treatment in battle. He created what would become mobile army surgical hospitals, better known as MASH.

Along with all the innovations and high-profile operations, DeBakey was known for the warmth of his bedside manner and the perfectionism in his practice. He poured those traits into the thousands of surgeons he trained over the decades at Baylor University’s medical school.

Dr. Claude L’Enfant, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, told the Los Angeles Times that what made DeBakey different from many of his famous peers was that DeBakey “exported his know-how to the world.”

We’re grateful for that.