Denton Cooley - Heart Surgeon, Timeline and Family

He was born on August 22, 1920 in Texas. His father was a successful dentist and had a thriving practice; thus the family lived comfortably even during the Great Depression when others were struggling. However, his father was also an alcoholic and thus Denton had a complicated relationship with him.

As a young boy he was shy and insecure but he blossomed into a confident person when he went to school. He was a brilliant student who excelled in academics and also did well in sports.

He enrolled at the University of Texas where he majored in zoology and also played for the college basketball team.

Initially he aspired to become a dentist but later decided to pursue medicine. He began his medical education at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston before transferring to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. At John Hopkins he met Dr. Alfred Blalock who became his mentor.

He considered Dr. Blalock to be a pioneer in cardiology and resolved to follow in his footsteps. He obtained his M.D. degree in 1944 and assisted Dr. Blalock in correcting an infant’s congenital heart defect, an operation known as “Blue Baby” procedure.

He joined the Army Medical Corps in 1946 and served as chief of surgical services at the station hospital in Austria. After two years he was discharged with the rank of captain in 1948.

After the World War II, he returned to Hopkins to complete his residency after which he remained there as an instructor in surgery. He went to London in 1950 to work with the eminent British surgeon, Lord Russell Brock.

During the 1950s he moved to Houston to accept a position as the associate professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. He also worked at its affiliate institution, the Methodist Hospital.

The decade of 1950s also saw Cooley working with Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, an eminent cardiologist and a few years senior to Cooley. The two men, both exceptionally brilliant at their chosen field had a tumultuous relationship as their egos often clashed.

Cooley along with his colleagues worked on developing artificial heart valves over the 1960s. His work on artificial heart valves helped to bring down the mortality for heart valve transplants from 70% in 1962 to 8% in 1967.

He performed his first human heart transplant in May 1968, just months after Dr. Christiaan Barnard had performed the world’s first successful human heart transplant.

In 1969, he implanted an artificial heart in a human being for the first time. The patient, Haskell Karp lived for 64 hours with the implanted device before it could be replaced with a donor’s heart. The patient however died a day after the second operation and questions were raised about the doctor’s decision to implant the artificial device in the first place.

The incident of Cooley implanting an artificial heart in a patient was severely criticized by Dr. DeBakey and the relationship between the two doctors was strained beyond repair. Thus Cooley resigned from his post at Baylor.

Cooley was a prolific surgeon and by 1972 he had performed over 1200 bypass surgeries and 10,000 open-heart operations—a world record for a cardiac surgeon.

The Denton A. Cooley Cardiovascular Surgical Foundation was established by the Residents and Fellows of Cooley in his honor in 1972. Today over 900 cardiac surgeons from countries all over the world are members of this prestigious organization.

Denton Cooley created history in April 1969 when he implanted an artificial heart in a 47-year-old man, Haskell Karp who was dying of a heart condition. This mechanical heart kept Karp alive for 64 hours before a donor heart could be transplanted. Though the patient did not live for long after surgery, this implantation still remains a medical breakthrough.

The International Surgical Society awarded him the Ren�e Lebiche Prize—its highest honor—in 1967, calling him "the most valuable surgeon of the heart and blood vessel anywhere in the world."

In 1984 former President Ronald Reagan presented Cooley with the US’s highest civilian award, the National Medal of Freedom for his great contributions to the field of medical science.

President Bill Clinton presented him with the National Medal of Technology—the highest honor for technological innovation in the US—in 1998.

He married Louise Goldborough Thomas, a registered nurse, in 1949. The couple was blessed with five daughters. Today, he also has several grandchildren.