Legendary trauma surgeon, TV personality and telemedicine developer Dr. James H. “Red” Duke Jr., who helped saved the life of Texas Gov. John Connally the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, died Tuesday. He was 86.
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, where Duke was on faculty since 1972, announced his death Tuesday.
Duke established the trauma service at what is now known as Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center and, in 1976, helped develop Memorial Hermann Life Flight, which UTHealth said was the first air ambulance service in the Lone Star State.
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Duke was known nationally for hosting syndicated TV shorts called “Dr. Red Duke’s Health Reports” for 18 years.
As a young medical resident at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Duke was in the trauma room on Nov. 23, 1963 when Kennedy and Connally were brought in with gunshot wounds. He helped operate on the Texas governor, who survived.
In the 1990s, Duke teamed with the Department of Defense’s Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center to develop a teletrauma project known as the Disaster Relief and Emergency Medical Services, or DREAMS. That effort helped put telemedicine technology in rural Texas ambulances and Life Flight helicopters starting in 1999.
“Here in Houston, early intervention is a given,” Duke said in a 1999 interview. “But in many counties in Texas, with a heart attack or a bad hemorrhage, you can be in deep trouble.”
With DREAMS, EMTs in remote areas could consult with specialists to determine whether patients could be treated at local hospitals, or if they needed to be airlifted to an urban trauma center at great expense.
“The outcome is determined by quickness of care,” Duke explained. “By electronically taking the physician to the scene, we save lives, and that’s the motivation for this project.”
DREAMS has since been commercialized by Phoenix-based telemedicine company LifeBot. Duke appeared at the 2011 HIMSS conference on behalf of LifeBot.
UTHealth said Duke had a curriculum vitae more than 70 pages long. He will be buried at the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.
Photo: Dwight C. Andrews/The University of Texas Medical School at Houston Office of Communications
