Denton Cooley
Denton Arthur Cooley ( born August 22, 1920 in Houston ) is an American heart surgeon.
Cooley initially studied zoology at the University of Texas ( completion in 1941 ) before it. Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine studied (MD in 1944 at Johns Hopkins ) During his internship at Johns Hopkins, he assisted Alfred Blalock to be a heart surgeon whose pioneering operation of a cyanotic congenital heart disease in infants, whereupon he decided at a. 1946-1948 he did his military service in the Army Medical Corps in Linz, where he led the surgery. In 1950 he went to completing his residency training to London to study at the Heart surgeons Lord Russell Brock. From 1951 he was back in Houston as an Associate Professor of Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. Here began his collaboration with Michael Ellis DeBakey, with whom he developed techniques for the removal of aneurysms, for example, and the use of the heart -lung machine during cardiac surgery, which was successfully used by Cooley in 1955 at the Methodist 's Hospital. In 1962 he founded the privately managed Texas Heart Institute. In 1969 he moved completely from his professorship at Baylor College to the St. Luke 's Episcopal Hospital in Houston, where he was ( was where DeBakey ) since 1960 by the Methodist 's Hospital went as a surgeon. Also, the Texas Heart Institute was later settled at St. Luke's. Under the direction of Cooley there over 100,000 surgeries were performed open heart, what the Institute made one of the leading such centers worldwide.
On May 3, 1968, he carried out his first heart transplant, which was more successful than its predecessor, the patient survived 204 days. The following year, he already pointed out 22 heart transplants.
He has authored more than 1,300 scientific articles as an author and co -author of 13 books and.
During his career, he was for many decades in a particular Animosiät of professional competition with the heart surgeon DeBakey, after they had previously worked closely together in Houston. That was also the subject of the title of Life magazine. In 2007, she officially buried their rivalry, as the Cardiovascular Surgical Society of Cooley with a Lifetime Achievement Award bestowed on the 99-year DeBakey. His Denton A. Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Foundation was founded in 1972.
While DeBakey hesitated at the transplantation of an artificial heart into a human mid-1960s, transplanted Cooley in 1969 as first an artificial heart ( designed by Domingo Liotta from the laboratory of DeBakey ) in a human ( Haskell Karp ). Cooley bridged so that 65 hours until the patient, who was previously in critical condition, eintransplantiert got a human heart (though he survived this only 36 hours). DeBakey was angered by the use of an artificial heart from his laboratory without consultation with him and it came to an open break between the two. DeBakey described the procedure of Cooley as unethical and an investigation was part of the Baylor College and the National Institutes of Health ( who had funded the research on artificial hearts ) performed. Cooley finally left mainly because of this college.
In 1988, he filed for bankruptcy due to failed property speculation ( and falling property prices during a bear market ). As a hobby he played golf ( after serving as a student actively played basketball ) and played from the mid 1960s to the 1970s bass in a swing band called Heartbeats.
Cooley received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science, the René Leriche Prize of the International Surgical Society ( 1967) and the National Medal of Technology.
Anecdotes
Asked in court by a lawyer, whether he considered himself the best heart surgeons in the world, he agreed. When asked if that was not something immodest, he answered Maybe, but keep in mind that I'm under oath.