Surgery News - September 2008 - (Page 4) 4 S U R G E R Y NEWS • S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 8 THE 20/20 B Y M A R K S. L E S N E Y VISION Evolutionary Changes in Surgical Practice Appreciation graft the way we developed it, I am not sure we would have it today with the way they regulate things. …When I went down to the department store they said ‘We are fresh out of nylon, but we do have a new material called Dacron.’ I felt it, and it looked good to me. So I bought a yard of it. I took this yard of Dacron cloth, I cut two sheets the width I wanted, sewed the edges on each side, and made a tube out of it . . . We put the graft on a stent, wrapped nylon thread around it, pushed it together, and baked it. After about two or three years of laboratory work on my own [including experiments in dogs], I decided that it was time to put the graft in a human being. I did not have a committee to approve it. In 1954, I put the first one in during an abdominal aortic aneurysm. That first patient lived, I think, for 13 years and never had any trouble,” Dr. DeBakey related in an interview published in 1996 in the Journal of Vascular Surgery. In 1964, Dr. DeBakey was the first to perform a successful coronary artery bypass in what is now a common procedure: coronary artery bypass grafting. He was a pioneer of devices such as the left ventricular assist device, the extracorporeal pneumatic pump, and the total artificial heart model. In his death, Dr. DeBakey was the first Houston resident given the honor of lying in state at City Hall, where he was viewed by long lines of the general public. ■ Dr. DeBakey, Cardiovascular Surgery Pioneer Else vier Global Medical Ne ws PHR Criteria Identified for Certification B Y M A RY E L L E N SCHNEIDER r. Michael Ellis DeBakey, pioneer heart surgeon and medical device innovator, died July 11, 2008, in Houston. Renowned for his immense contributions to the progress of medical science, Dr. DeBakey was declared a “living legend” by the Library of Congress and was this year awarded a Congressional Gold Medal for his lifetime achievements, in particular his pioneering work as a heart surgeon. Even before receiving his medical degree from Tulane University in 1932, he developed a small continuous flow–roller pump designed to improve blood transfusion. And in 1939, with his mentor, Dr. Alton Ochsner, Dr. DeBakey suggested a strong link between smoking and lung cancer. During World War II, while assigned to the U.S. Army Surgeon General’s office, Dr. DeBakey persuaded the surgeon general to form what would become the mobile army surgical hospitals (MASH units)—an innovation that gained him the U.S. Army Legion of Merit in 1945. He helped to establish the Veterans Administration medical center research system, and he initiated the movement that in 1956 took the Army’s poorly housed medical library and used it to create the National Library of Medicine. D Else vier Global Medical Ne ws MEDICINE top priority when developing Privacy should be thecertification criteria for personal health records, a task force created by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology has recommended. Adequate security and interoperability also must be included in certification efforts, according to the task force. The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) will use these recommendations as it prepares to begin certifying personal health records (PHRs) next summer. The task force recommended that the voluntary certification process should apply to any products or services that collect, receive, store, or use health information provided by consumers. Certification should also apply to products or services that transmit or disclose to a third party any personal health information. This would allow the CCHIT to offer certification to a range of products and applications. CCHIT hopes that, just as it did in the EHR field, certification will create a floor of functionality, security, and interoperability, said Dr. Paul Tang, cochair of the PHR Advisory Task Force and vice president and chief medical information officer for the Palo Alto (Calif.) Medical Foundation. The task force called for requirements to maintain privacy in monitoring and enforcement, and for consumer protection that would allow patients to remove their data if certification is revoked. The group also recommended that standardsbased criteria be developed that would require PHRs to send and receive data from as many potential data sources as possible, including ambulatory EHRs, hospital EHRs, labs, and networks. In July, the task force made its recommendations and handed over responsibility for PHR certification to a CCHIT work group. That work group will develop the actual certification criteria that will be used to test PHR products starting next July, according to Dr. Jody Pettit, strategic leader for CCHIT’s PHR work group. ■ According to the Web site of Baylor College of Medicine’s department of surgery, where he spent almost his entire postwar career, Dr. DeBakey operated on more than 60,000 patients in the Houston area alone. In 1953, he performed the first successful carotid endarterectomy, as well as the first successful removal and graft replacement of a fusiform thoracic aortic aneurysm, and in 1954, the first successful resection and graft replacement of an aneurysm of the distal aortic arch and upper descending thoracic aorta. In 1955 he performed the first successful resection of a thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm using the DeBakey Dacron graft—the first artificial arterial graft of its kind. “If we now tried to develop the Dacron ©BAYLOR COLLEGE OF http://www.nashvillesurg.com http://www.nashvillesurg.com
Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Surgery News - September 2008 Surgery News - September 2008 Contents Appreciation Low Scores News From the College: New Leader Practice Trends: High Price to Pay Surgery News - September 2008 Surgery News - September 2008 - Contents (Page 1) Surgery News - September 2008 - Contents (Page 2) Surgery News - September 2008 - Contents (Page 3) Surgery News - September 2008 - Appreciation (Page 4) Surgery News - September 2008 - Low Scores (Page 5) Surgery News - September 2008 - Low Scores (Page 6) Surgery News - September 2008 - Low Scores (Page 7) Surgery News - September 2008 - News From the College: New Leader (Page 8) Surgery News - September 2008 - News From the College: New Leader (Page 9) Surgery News - September 2008 - News From the College: New Leader (Page 10) Surgery News - September 2008 - Practice Trends: High Price to Pay (Page 11) Surgery News - September 2008 - Practice Trends: High Price to Pay (Page 12) Surgery News - September 2008 - Practice Trends: High Price to Pay (Page 13) Surgery News - September 2008 - Practice Trends: High Price to Pay (Page 14) Surgery News - September 2008 - Practice Trends: High Price to Pay (Page 15) Surgery News - September 2008 - Practice Trends: High Price to Pay (Page 16)
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