Famed Texas heart surgeon Denton Cooley died at 96

“The heart is truly a remarkable organ,” Cooley said in 1989, “and developing a perfect substitute is going to be a challenge not only for this generation, but for generations of researchers to come.”

He also pioneered techniques for the repair of aneurysms of the aorta.

He had a longtime feud with fellow Texan Dr. Michael DeBakey that ended only a year before DeBakey died in 2008, at age 99. Both doctors pioneered key techniques to help heart patients. They both earned national and international reputations, too, making headlines and attracting rich and famous patients.

Cooley was born in 1920, the son of a wealthy Houston dentist. He graduated from the University of Texas in 1941 and earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1944.

“Denton’s pioneering contributions to medicine are, of course, legend,” former President George H. W. Bush, who lives in Houston, said in a statement.

The same year he earned his medical degree, Cooley assisted Dr. Alfred Blalock in the first “blue baby” operation to correct an infant’s congenital heart defect, which helped pave the way for modern heart surgery.

In 1951, Cooley joined Baylor College of Medicine at Houston’s Methodist Hospital, where he was appointed a surgical instructor under DeBakey.

Cooley moved to Texas Children’s Hospital in the mid-1950s where he began a series of heart operations on children. He founded the Texas Heart Institute as part of St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in 1962, when he and DeBakey made a formal split. Over the years, Cooley’s institute research team became widely recognized for the development and testing of heart assist devices for patients awaiting transplants.

In May 1968, Cooley sewed the heart of a 15-year-old into Everett Thomas, a 47-year-old accountant from Phoenix. Thomas later received a second transplant, and he lived about seven months — making him the first U.S. heart transplant recipient to be well enough to go home from the hospital.

In April 1969, Cooley implanted the world’s first artificial heart into 47-year-old Haskell Karp as a temporary measure while a transplant was arranged. Karp lived 65 hours until the transplant was performed, but died of pneumonia a day and a half later.

The operation widened the rift with DeBakey, who alleged that Cooley took the heart used in Karp from his laboratory.

Cooley and DeBakey publicly made amends in 2007, when Cooley presented DeBakey with a lifetime achievement award. When DeBakey died, Cooley said, “There is no question that he was one of the pioneers of cardiovascular surgery in the last half of the 20th century.”

Among his honours, Cooley received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, from President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Cooley is survived by his four daughters. His wife, Louise, died in October. A fifth daughter died in 1985.

___

Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter at www.twitter.com/juanlozano70

Juan A. Lozano, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

Famed Texas heart surgeon Denton Cooley died at 96

What's Trending