Tribute to Pat O. Daily, MD

Dr. Pat O. Daily, 71, died on April 25, 2008 at his home in Bixby, Oklahoma. He will be remembered by those who worked with him as a gifted teacher, a skilled, confident, knowledgeable surgeon and STIMULATING mentor dedicated to the advancement of cardiac surgery and medicine. He will be sorely missed by those who knew him and benefited from his intense desire to do things better and never be content with the status quo.

He was born January 1, 1937 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of a family doctor named Raymond E. Daily.  He earned his Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Oklahoma and his medical degree from the University of Chicago School of Medicine. He worked as an Air Force flight surgeon and completed his residency in Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford where he became Professor of Surgery. He later moved to the University of California in San Diego where he became Director of Cardiac Surgery at University of California in San Diego. He then ended his career at Sharp Memorial Hospital in San Diego. 

Though he had numerous accomplishments in the field of cardiac medicine, Pat was known for his pioneering work in pulmonary thromboendarterectomy (PTE), a surgical procedure for removing blood clots from blood vessels of the lungs. His interest in pulmonary embolism began at the University of Chicago where he experimented with retrograde perfusion of the lung to remove acute emboli. After leaving Stanford and accepting the Chairmanship of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of California in San Diego, he pioneered the technique to remove organized fibrotic clots from hypertensive lungs. The procedure requires meticulous dissection in a restricted area often obscured by exuberant collateral blood flow. To enhance visibility, he introduced the use of profound systemic hypothermia with circulatory arrest to the procedure. Because organized thrombus becomes fused to the vascular wall and subsequently accumulated superimposed thrombus, he termed the surgical technique a pulmonary thromboendarterectomy to remind surgeons that simply removing the thrombus was inadequate.
  
While at Stanford, he began his career as a consummate coach easily able to teach cardiac surgical technical skills. He always somehow convinced young trainees that their abilities were far better than even they realized; his immense self-confidence was infectious. He was a member of the team that performed the first human heart transplant in the United States at Stanford in 1968. In 1970 he was the chief architect of the Stanford Classification System for dissecting aortic aneurysms. He also published the first cumulative series of internal jugular catheters and described the insertion techniques in 1970. He published more than one hundred scientific articles during his four decade career. The San Diego Chapter of the American Heart Association honored him as Man of the Year in 2003. 

As an inventor, Pat designed surgical instruments needed for performing PTE. He also designed the cardiac cooling jacket for use as a cardioprotective mechanism for prolonged cardiovascular cases requiring long ischemic times for the heart. He developed the Daily Medical Products which distributed several of these products internationally. He perceived the need for affordable what was thought to be a heart-healthy diet, and being a bachelor at the time, developed a food chain known as Daily's Fit and Fresh Foods in 1991. He also formulated his own line of vitamins and antioxidants.

During his years in the U.S. Air Force as a Flight Surgeon, Pat learned to fly. Given his love of any challenge, Pat soon had all his FAA pilot certificates, including airline transport pilot. He acquired numerous aircraft type ratings and had mastered aerobatic flying. As a flight instructor, he taught several Stanford surgical residents how to fly. With that ubiquitous “Dennis the Menace” gleam in his eye, he loved to take those with great bravado and arrogance or those unfortunate individuals with queasy stomachs to fly aerobatics on Sunday mornings. After returning to Palo Alto airport and pulling the Pitts Special to a stop, it was perversely entertaining for observers to see the new innocent “victim” tumble out of the cockpit to his knees on the tarmac with a partially full airsickness bag and continue retching. He was an avid scuba diver and underwater video photographer and had a life long interest in ham radio (W5UFD), having built his first from bits and pieces when he was eleven years old.

He is survived by his wife, Diane. He and Diane lived in Rancho Santa Fe before recently relocating to Bixby, Oklahoma, where Pat was a co-owner of BTC, a local telecommunications company and a supporter of the Daily Family YMCA. He is survived by his daughter, Auburn, in San Francisco, his son, Ray, of Tijuana, Medico, his sister, Mary Lee, of Huntsville, Alabama, and four grandchildren.

Walter P. Dembitsky, MD
San Diego, CA USA

D. Craig Miller, MD
Stanford, CA USA