One of the first things a medical student learns about surgery is that when he or she is going to remove the spleen, it is essential for the patient that the knife and other equipment which is used for this surgery, don’t hit the pancreas. This is as said one of the first things a medical student learn and a proccedure which Dr. De Bakey, this famous doctor, without any doubt could do even with his eyes closed.

During this surgery, where the Shah’s spleen was removed, Dr. De Bakey hit the Shah’s pancreas with his surgery knife. Before removing the spleen the Egyptian doctors - one of them, Egypt’s most famous doctor - and also another famous Egyptian doctor, who also was Anwar Saadat’s own son-in-law, several times warned De Bakey about the fact that the way he was taking out the spleen was not the right way. But De Bakey didn’t listen to them. The same doctors saw with their own eyes that Dr. De Bakey hit the Shahs pancreas while removing the Shah’s spleen.

In an interview with the American Medical Journal from June 18th 1980, Dr. De Bakey said: “It was not necessary to take any measures, because no damage had been happened on the pancreas”.
The future has shown that De Bakey lied. Even the most famous Egyptian newspaper called Al-Ahram wrote this in their newspapers (number 6, 11 and 20) from June the same year. Al-Ahram wrote that: “During the surgery of the Shah of Iran, the Shah’s pancreas was damaged and therefore the pancreas got a serious infection. Because of the medication that the Shah gets for his cancer treatment, his white blood cells are very few and therefore the Shah’s body can not fight against any form of infections.”

Dr. De Bakey, as usual, took distance from what Al-Ahram wrote and accused the Egyptian doctors for telling lies to the newspaper.

In all his interviews, De Bakey denied that the pancreas had been damaged, even though he knew that it was a lie. The reason for why today everyone knows he lied and really damaged the Shah’s pancreas was what happened three months later.

Three months later the Shah had a new surgery and this time not with De Bakey, but with a new French doctor, Dr. Pierre Louie Faniyez. In this surgery, it was seen that an infection had taken place and more than one and a half litre of infection were brought out from the Shahs body. Dr. De Bakey made this infection, when he hit his knife on the Shah’s pancreas.