The Famous Dr. DeBakey and His Two Controversial Practices

As we noted last month, the highly successful cardiac surgeon, Dr. Michael DeBakey of Baylor University, was famous in the 1970s not only for his medical successes, but also for two unusual practices: 1) He performed “overlapping surgeries,” in which he moved from one operating room to another, executing only the crucial aspects of a series of patients' procedures and leaving the rest to other surgeons; and 2) He filmed many, if not all, of his procedures so that there was complete documentation of whatever happened during the operation. Both of these practices have potential to impact the outcome of a medical malpractice claim. We focused on the first of them last month. Let's now turn our attention to the second.