Word: debakey
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Diet & Stress. His vast experience has left Surgeon DeBakey firm in the conviction that the various artery diseases have as many distinct causes as there are different kinds of fevers. He is sure that it will take long and painstaking research to pinpoint all those causes and find cures or preventives. He is sure that causes and cures will eventually be found, but he is frankly disappointed with the results...
...DeBakey is deeply involved in the forward-looking research that may some day do away with the need for his surgical skills. "We can't stand by and wait for final answers," he says. "There are lives to be saved today, and future illnesses to be prevented...
Widened Horizon. The artery disorders for which DeBakey and his colleagues have devised ever more daring surgical procedures fall into two main classes: blockages and aneurysms. Blockages may be almost anywhere-in the greatest vessel of all, the aorta, in the coronary arteries embedded in the heart wall itself, in arteries leading to the legs, and in the carotid and vertebral vessels carrying blood to the brain (see diagram, opposite page). The brain itself, however, is the province of the neurosurgeons...
Partial shutdowns of the aorta are sometimes caused by narrowing ("coarctation"), which may be present from birth, but more often by the later development of obstructive deposits containing calcium and cholesterol. What is responsible for these deposits is one of the basic questions not yet answered. In this area, DeBakey's work first dealt with shutdowns in the abdominal section of the aorta, because there the big blood vessel could be clamped shut well beyond the point where arteries branch off to supply the brain. The lower part of the body could be deprived of its blood supply long...
...aorta just before it splits to form the two main iliac arteries. A familiar feature of insufficient blood supply to the legs, which causes pain in the calf muscles so acute that the victim can hardly walk, is its on-again, off-again nature. Ten days after DeBakey has bypassed the blocked artery with a length of tubing, the patient who previously could walk no farther than a city block without disabling pain can usually go a leisurely mile...