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By Michelle J. Jones
Arizona Daily Wildcat
December 6, 1996
An American heart surgeon who was a consultant during Russian President Boris Yeltsin's recent bypass surgery said yesterday that he was the doctor who discovered the president's heart was slowly improving and could undergo the tedious operation.In a press conference at University Medical Center, Dr. Michael DeBakey said he ordered a second echocardiogram for Yeltsin which showed an improvement in the president's heart function.
DeBakey, a professor emeritus at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said members of Yeltsin's surgery team called him and asked him to consult in the procedure. DeBakey is also director of the DeBakey Heart Center at Baylor and Methodist Hospital in Houston.
DeBakey said he arrived in Moscow in September amidst calls from the opposition party in Russia for Yeltsin to resign. When he arrived, he saw Yeltsin's echocardiogram taken in August, which showed only a 20 percent ejection fraction, he said.
The ejection fraction is a measure of the amount of blood pumped from a person's heart, and is generally a good indicator of heart function, said Dr. Jack Copeland, chief of cardiothoracic surgery at UMC. He said a normal heart has an ejection fraction of about 65 percent.
DeBakey said doctors were discouraged by Yeltsin's bad heart function, and had determined it was virtually inoperable.
"When I arrived, I did a very thorough physical exam. What surprised me was that he (Yeltsin) did not seem very sick to me, so I ordered another echocardiogram," DeBakey said. "This one showed very remarkable improvement, with the ejection fraction up to 35 percent. That changed the whole picture."
He said that because Yeltsin's heart had improved, he now became a better candidate for an operation, so the surgical team decided to go ahead with preparations for bypass surgery.
DeBakey also discovered that Yeltsin had low thyroid function and blood in his stool. After treatments for those problems, another echocardiogram showed the ejection fraction up to 40 percent. The improvement through time showed that Yeltsin's heart was not permanently damaged and that delayed the operation. Although the media speculated this was a bad sign, it was actually good for Yeltsin's health, DeBakey said.
"I went to President Yeltsin and gave him a report. He was very pleased and grateful. He told me I should hold a press conference, and I did; although I did not realize the full political importance of it at the time.
"The next day, though, I found out (the importance) when the opposition party quieted down because they didn't like my report," DeBakey said.
Yeltsin's operation, which involved five bypasses of his coronary arteries, went well, and DeBakey said he expects Yeltsin will be able to resume his full presidential duties after he returns from a long vacation, which he is taking next week.
DeBakey, who has developed more than 50 surgical instruments and is considered a pioneer heart surgeon by his colleagues, recently developed a new type of artificial heart with NASA engineers.
Copeland, who is co-director of the heart center at the UA College of Medicine, said the four types of artificial hearts UMC uses are all based on a pulsatile system which pumps like a regular heart, squeezing blood out and then relaxing. He said DeBakey's heart uses a continuous flow like a garden hose.
DeBakey said the artificial heart he developed is much smaller than those in use today and it will cost up to half as much. It also uses up to a third less energy. The heart is in experimental trials with animals to obtain Food and Drug Administration approval, and DeBakey said he hopes it will be ready for clinical trials by the end of next year.
DeBakey is also participating in a research symposium at the University of Arizona today. "Meeting the Challenge: Research and Technology in the 21st Century," is in McClelland Hall from 8:15 a.m. to 2:15 p.m.
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