Denton Arthur Cooley (August 22, 1920 – November 18, 2016) was an American heart and cardiothoracic surgeon famous for performing the first implantation of a total

artificial heart An artificial heart is a device that replaces the heart. Artificial hearts are typically used to bridge the time to heart transplantation, or to permanently replace the heart in the case that a heart transplant (from a deceased human or, exper ...

. Cooley was also the founder and surgeon in-chief of

The Texas Heart Institute The Texas Heart Institute is an independent, nonprofit organization that is improving cardiovascular health through trailblazing research, thought leadership, education, and patient care to forge a better future for those with cardiovascular diseas ...

, chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at clinical partner

Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center (BSLMC) is the private adult teaching hospital of Baylor College of Medicine jointly owned with CHI St. Luke's Health. The medical staff at the hospital includes full-time Baylor faculty, as well as community p ...

, consultant in Cardiovascular Surgery at Texas Children's Hospital and a clinical professor of Surgery at the

University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) is a public academic health science center in Houston, Texas, United States. It was created in 1972 by The University of Texas System Board of Regents. It is located in the T ...

School and early career

Cooley was born August 22, 1920, in

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 ...

, and graduated in 1941 from the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

(UT), where he was a member of the

Kappa Sigma Kappa Sigma (), commonly known as Kappa Sig, is an American collegiate social fraternity founded at the University of Virginia in 1869. Kappa Sigma is one of the five largest international fraternities with currently 318 active chapters and col ...

fraternity and the Texas Cowboys, played on the

basketball team Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's ...

, and majored in

zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, an ...

. He became interested in surgery through several

pre-medical Pre-medical (often referred to as pre-med) is an educational track that undergraduate students in the United States pursue prior to becoming medical students. It involves activities that prepare a student for medical school, such as pre-med course ...

classes he attended in college and began his medical education at the

University of Texas Medical Branch The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) is a public academic health science center in Galveston, Texas. It is part of the University of Texas System. UTMB includes the oldest medical school in Texas, and has about 11,000 employees. In Febr ...

Galveston Galveston ( ) is a coastal resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of , with a population of 47,743 in 2010, is the county seat of surrounding Ga ...

. He completed his medical degree and his surgical training at the

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) is the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1893, the School of Medicine shares a campus with the Johns Hopkins Hospi ...

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean t ...

, where he also completed his internship. At Johns Hopkins, he worked with Dr.

Alfred Blalock Alfred Blalock (April 5, 1899 – September 15, 1964) was an American surgeon most noted for his work on the medical condition of shock as well as Tetralogy of Fallot— commonly known as Blue baby syndrome. He created, with assistance from h ...

and assisted in the first "Blue Baby" procedure to correct an infant's

congenital heart defect A congenital heart defect (CHD), also known as a congenital heart anomaly and congenital heart disease, is a defect in the structure of the heart or great vessels that is present at birth. A congenital heart defect is classed as a cardiovascul ...

. In 1946, Cooley was called to active duty with the

Army Medical Corps A medical corps is generally a military branch or officer corps responsible for medical care for serving military personnel. Such officers are typically military physicians. List of medical corps The following organizations are examples of medica ...

and served as chief of surgical services at the station hospital in

Linz Linz ( , ; cs, Linec) is the capital of Upper Austria and third-largest city in Austria. In the north of the country, it is on the Danube south of the Czech border. In 2018, the population was 204,846. In 2009, it was a European Capital ...

, Austria. He was discharged in 1948 with the rank of

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

and returned to complete his residency at Johns Hopkins, where he remained as an instructor in surgery. In 1950, he went to London to work with Russell Brock at the

Royal Brompton Hospital Royal Brompton Hospital is the largest specialist heart and lung medical centre in the United Kingdom. It is managed by Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust. History Consumption in the 19th Century In the 19th century, consumption was a c ...

Major career events

In the 1950s, Cooley returned to Houston to become associate professor of surgery at

Baylor College of Medicine Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) is a medical school and research center in Houston, Texas, within the Texas Medical Center, the world's largest medical center. BCM is composed of four academic components: the School of Medicine, the Graduate S ...

and to work at its affiliate institution, The Methodist Hospital. Cooley began working with American cardiac surgeon, scientist, and medical educator

Michael E. DeBakey Michael Ellis DeBakey (September 7, 1908 – July 11, 2008) was a Lebanese-American general and cardiovascular surgeon, scientist and medical educator who became Chairman of the Department of Surgery, President, and Chancellor of Baylor College ...

. During this time, he worked on developing a new method of removing

aortic The aorta ( ) is the main and largest artery in the human body, originating from the left ventricle of the heart and extending down to the abdomen, where it splits into two smaller arteries (the common iliac arteries). The aorta distributes ox ...

aneurysm An aneurysm is an outward bulging, likened to a bubble or balloon, caused by a localized, abnormal, weak spot on a blood vessel wall. Aneurysms may be a result of a hereditary condition or an acquired disease. Aneurysms can also be a nidus ( ...

s, the bulging weak spots that may develop in the wall of the artery. In 1960, Cooley moved his practice to St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital while continuing to teach at Baylor. In 1962, he founded

with private funds and, following a dispute with DeBakey, resigned his position at Baylor in 1969. His skill as a surgeon was demonstrated by successfully performing numerous bloodless open-heart surgeries on

Jehovah's Witnesses Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. The group reports a worldwide membership of approximately 8.7 million adherents involved in ...

patients beginning in the early 1960s. He and his colleagues worked on developing new artificial heart valves from 1962 to 1967. During that period, mortality for heart valve transplants fell from 70% to 8%. In 1969, he became the first heart surgeon to implant an

designed by Domingo Liotta in a man, Haskell Karp, who lived for 65 hours. The next year, in 1970, "he performed the first implantation of an artificial heart in a human when no heart replacement was immediately available."

On March 13, 1972, the Denton A. Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Society was founded at the Texas Heart Institute by the Residents and Fellows of Cooley to honor him. Founding President Philip S. Chua had envisioned this exclusive society to foster academic, professional, and personal camaraderie among cardiac surgeons in the United States and around the world through scientific seminars and symposia. There are now more than 900 cardiac surgeons from more than 50 countries around the globe who are members of the Denton A. Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Society. In the HBO film ''

Something the Lord Made ''Something the Lord Made'' is a 2004 American made-for-television biographical drama film about the black cardiac pioneer Vivien Thomas (1910–1985) and his complex and volatile partnership with white surgeon Alfred Blalock (1899–1964), th ...

'', Cooley was portrayed by Timothy J. Scanlin, Jr. During the

2000 U.S. presidential election The 2000 United States presidential election was the 54th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 2000. Republican candidate George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and eldest son of the 41st president, George H. W. Bush, ...

, Cooley was asked by then-candidate George W. Bush to review vice-presidential candidate

Dick Cheney Richard Bruce Cheney ( ; born January 30, 1941) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He is currently the oldest living former ...

's medical records, particularly concerning the status of his chronic heart condition.

Personal life

Cooley's interests included basketball, which he played in high school and as a three-year letterman for the UT men's basketball team (1939–1941), and golf, which he became interested in during his youth and played for 68 years. The practice and training facility of the UT men's and

women's basketball Women's basketball is the team sport of basketball played by women. It began being played in 1892, one year after men's basketball, at Smith College in Massachusetts. It spread across the United States, in large part via women's college compet ...

teams, the Denton A. Cooley Pavilion, which opened in 2003, was named in his honor. Among his other outside interests, Cooley played

upright bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox additions such as the octobass). Similar ...

in a

swing band Swing music is a style of jazz that developed in the United States during the late 1920s and early 1930s. It became nationally popular from the mid-1930s. The name derived from its emphasis on the off-beat, or nominally weaker beat. Swing bands ...

called

The Heartbeats The Heartbeats were a 1950s American doo-wop group best known for their song " A Thousand Miles Away", which charted at No. 53 in the US ''Billboard'' listings in 1957. Career The Heartbeats began as a quartet in early 1953 in Jamaica, Queens ...

from 1965 through the early 1970s. Cooley reportedly answered in the affirmative when a lawyer during a trial asked him if he considered himself to be the best heart surgeon in the world. "Don't you think that's being rather immodest?” the lawyer replied. "Perhaps," Cooley responded. "But remember I'm under oath." Cooley filed for bankruptcy in 1988, citing real estate debts during a market downturn. Cooley and the heart surgeon

had a professional rivalry that lasted more than 40 years; they made amends in a public rapprochement in 2007, when DeBakey was 99 years old and Cooley was 87. Cooley died on November 18, 2016, at the age of 96.

Honors and awards

* Awarded the Golden Plate Award of the

American Academy of Achievement The American Academy of Achievement, colloquially known as the Academy of Achievement, is a non-profit educational organization that recognizes some of the highest achieving individuals in diverse fields and gives them the opportunity to meet ...

in 1968. * Awarded the Theodore Roosevelt Award in 1980. * Awarded the

Presidential Medal of Freedom The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award of the United States, along with the Congressional Gold Medal. It is an award bestowed by the president of the United States to recognize people who have made "an especially merit ...

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...

in 1984, the nation's highest civilian award * The 1967

René Leriche Henri Marie René Leriche (12 October 1879 – 28 December 1955) was a French vascular surgeon and physiologist. He was a specialist in pain, vascular surgery and the sympathetic trunk. He sensitized many who were mutilated in the first World w ...

Prize, the highest honor of the International Surgical Society * Awarded the

National Medal of Technology The National Medal of Technology and Innovation (formerly the National Medal of Technology) is an honor granted by the President of the United States to American inventors and innovators who have made significant contributions to the development ...

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again ...

in 1998 * He was a member of the

Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts ( la, Academia Scientiarum et Artium Serbica, sr-Cyr, Српска академија наука и уметности, САНУ, Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, SANU) is a national academy and the ...

in the Department of Medical Sciences.

References

External links

Video: Cooley Medical Pioneers Biography on Health.mil
– The Military Health System provides a look at the life and work of Denton Cooley.
Denton A. Cooley, M.D.
Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital

* Cooley, Dr. Denton and William H. Keller, Ph.D
Dr. Denton Cooley Oral History
, Houston Oral History Project, August 4, 2007. {{DEFAULTSORT:Cooley, Denton 1920 births 2016 deaths American cardiac surgeons People from Houston National Medal of Technology recipients Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Texas Longhorns men's basketball players San Jacinto High School alumni Johns Hopkins University alumni Members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Baylor College of Medicine physicians and researchers United States Army Medical Corps officers Physicians from Texas Writers from Texas American men's basketball players 20th-century American Episcopalians American heart and cardiothoracic surgeony:United States Army Medical Corps officers American heart and cardiothoracic surgeony:United States Army Medical Corps officers American heart and cardiothoracic surgeony:United States Army Medical Corps officers American heart and cardiothoracic surgeony:United States Army Medical Corps officers American heart and cardiothoracic surgeon