page_title: Michael DeBakey
section_title: Second World War
hierarchical_section_title: Michael DeBakey / Second World War
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Colonel Michael DeBakey, Medical Corps, US Army, (photo prise entre oct 1945 et Fev 1946. [DeBakey a été l'un des pionniers de la transplantation cardiaque]. English: Colonel Michael DeBakey, Medical Corps, US Army, October 1945-February 1946. [DeBakey was a pioneer in heart transplantation].
context_page_description: Michael Ellis DeBakey was a Lebanese-American cardiac surgeon and vascular surgeon, scientist and medical educator who became the chancellor emeritus of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, director of the Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center, and senior attending surgeon at Houston Methodist Hospital in Houston, with a career spanning 75 years.
  Born to Lebanese Christian immigrants, DeBakey was inspired to pursue a career in medicine by the physicians that he had met at his father's drug store, and he simultaneously learned sewing skills from his mother. He subsequently attended Tulane University for his premedical course and Tulane University School of Medicine to study medicine. At Tulane, he developed a version of the roller pump, which he initially used to transfuse blood directly from person to person and which later became a component of the heart–lung machine. Following early surgical training at Charity Hospital, DeBakey was encouraged to complete his surgical fellowships in Europe, before returning to Tulane University in 1937.
context_section_description: During the Second World War, DeBakey served in the U.S. Army as the director of the Surgical Consultants’ Division in the Surgeon General's office. He later held the rank of colonel in the Army Reserve. In 1945, he was given the Legion of Merit award.
  DeBakey helped develop Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units, which stationed doctors closer to the front lines and improved the survival rate of wounded soldiers in the Korean War.
  DeBakey later helped establish the Veterans Administration Medical Center Research System. 
  After the war, he returned to Tulane.
caption: Colonel Michael DeBakey, Medical Corps, US Army, October 1945-February 1946
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