The medical world has lost a great man on Friday night in the person of Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, a renowned heart surgeon whose professionalism and medical utensils (he created) has helped many people around the world “breathe” again.

Dr. DeBakey died of “natural causes” at The Methodist Hospital in Houston, according to a statement released on Saturday by Baylor College of Medicine and The Methodist Hospital. He was 99.

Dr. DeBakey is the creator of bypass surgery, which is now a common procedure used by surgeons all around the world. He himself needed such a surgery back in 2006 for his damaged aorta. Besides bypass surgery, he also invented the roller pump, which became an indispensible component of the heart-lung machine, which replaces the heart and lungs’ function during surgery.

Innovation was the world frequently used to describe his career. He helped create more than 70 surgical instruments being considered by many colleagues the father of modern cardiovascular surgery. His procedures once considered wonders are now commonplace procedures in most hospitals. He was the first to perform replacement of arterial aneurysm and obstructive lesions in the mid-1950s.

Being a perfectionist, as often accused, according to his own sayings in a 1985 Associated Press interview, had brought him international prestige, performing no less than 50,000 surgeries by 1992. His patients included famous names as the Duke of Windsor, the Shah of Iran, King Hussein of Jordan, Turkish President Turgut Ozal, Nicaraguan Leader Violetta Chamorro, President Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, as well as Russian President Boris Yeltsin and movie actress Marlene Dietrich. However famous or poor his patients were, Dr. DeBakey treated them equally. “Once you incise the skin, you find that they are all very similar,” he said.

His work meant everything to him. “I like my work, very much. I like it so much that I don’t want to do anything else,” he said. That’s why he liked to do everything “perfectly,” as “in surgery, you have to be as perfect as possible. There’s no room for mistakes,” he said in the same interview. He was devoted to his patients, and always believed he could do more to save them.

In 1963, Dr. DeBakey received the prestigious Albert Lasker Clinical Research Award for developing the fundamental concept of therapy in arterial disease: that in many forms of aortic and arterial disease, the pathologic process may be well localized, with relatively normal patent proximal and distal arterial beds, thus permitting application of effective surgical treatment.

His long life career brought him numerous other awards such as: International Society of Surgery Distinguished Service Award (1958) and Leriche Award (1959); American Heart Association Gold Heart Award (1968); American Surgical Association Distinguished Service Award (1981); Academy of Surgical Research Markowitz Award (1988); American Medical Association Virtual Mentor Award (2000); Houston Hall of Fame (2001); NASA Invention of the Year Award (2001) and the list can go on.

Dr. DeBakey’s impressive lifelong scholarship is reflected in more than 1,600 medical articles, chapters, and books on various aspects of surgery, medicine, health, medical research, and medical education, as well as ethical, socioeconomic, and philosophic discussions in these fields. All of them serve as manuals for thousands of heart surgeons all around the around. He himself liked to teach them into the “wonders” of the heart.

His work throughout the years was highly acclaimed by Methodist President Ron Girotto. “He has improved the human condition and touched the lives of generations to come. We will greatly miss him,” he said. Dr. Peter Traber, the President of Baylor College of Medicine, (which Dr. DeBakey turned into a national renowned medical center), praised his career as well, saying that “he set a standard for preeminence in all areas of his life that those who knew him and worked with him are compelled to emulate. And he served as a very visible reminder of the importance of leadership and giving back to ones community.”