World-famous heart surgeon Dr Michael DeBakey, who served as an advisor to US presidents for more than 40 years, died yesterday, aged 99.

DeBakey was the pioneer of bypass surgery and helped develop more than 70 surgical instruments in a career spanning 75 years.

His long list of patients included King Hussein of Jordan and American Presidents Richard Nixon, Lyndon B Johnson and John F Kennedy.

While still a medical student in 1932 he developed the pump which would be used 20 years later to keep blood moving in the body during open heart surgery.

In 1996, aged 87, he flew to Russia to examine President Boris Yeltsin and later oversaw his heart bypass surgery in Moscow and helped save his life. Yeltsin died of heart failure aged 76 last year.

DeBakey also went under the knife himself in 2006 for a damaged aorta, a procedure he developed during his career.

He died on last night in the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, from "natural causes".

His first wife Diana Cooper DeBakey died of a heart attack in 1972.

He is survived by his second wife German film actress Katrin Fehlhaber, their daughter and two of his four sons from his first marriage. The two others died before their father.

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