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Denton Cooley

1920–2016 · 96 years

The fastest hands in Houston, and the surgeon DeBakey stopped speaking to

Portrait of Denton Cooley — Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

His father drilled teeth in Houston and his grandfather had laid out the Heights, so the name and the money were both in place before he did anything. Cooley stood 6 feet 4 inches, went to the University of Texas on a basketball scholarship, played forward on a Southwest Conference championship team, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in zoology in 1941. He started medical school at Galveston, transferred to Johns Hopkins, and finished in 1944 with highest honors. That November he assisted at the first blue-baby operation, the procedure Vivien Thomas had worked out in a laboratory and Alfred Blalock performed with Thomas talking him through it from behind his shoulder.

Speed was the argument. Cooley held that the outcome of an operation was tied to its length, and he worked faster than anyone alive. As a registrar in London he had cut the Brompton waiting list by taking twice as many cases a day as his colleagues. In Houston he ran an assembly line of operating rooms. He founded the Texas Heart Institute in 1962 with private money raised from oilmen, and in 1968 performed the first successful heart transplant in the United States, on a 47-year-old accountant named Everett Thomas.

Haskell Karp was 47 and dying of heart failure. On April 4, 1969, Cooley replaced his heart with a mechanical pump — the first total artificial heart put into a human being, a bridge until a donor could be found. It ran about 65 hours. A donor heart arrived, Karp received it, and he died of infection the next day. DeBakey said the device had been developed in his laboratory under a federal grant and taken without permission. Cooley said the man would otherwise have died and that he was entitled to use it. The American College of Surgeons censured him. He left Baylor rather than sign a new pledge on human experimentation that more than 1,300 others signed. The two did not speak for 40 years. In 2007 Cooley's surgical society honored DeBakey, and DeBakey admitted Cooley to his own.

On January 10, 2001, the Texas Heart Institute marked its 100,000th open-heart operation, and Cooley sat for the photograph. Reagan had given him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984, Clinton the National Medal of Technology in 1998. In between came a reversal he never bothered to hide: in January 1988 he filed for bankruptcy protection, wiped out by real estate partnerships that went down with the Texas market, and he talked about it freely for the rest of his life. He kept operating until he was 87 and kept seeing patients almost to the end, and died at home in Houston on November 18, 2016, at 96.

Lifespan

15401700180019002030

Denton Cooley's life against the full span of the corpus.

Notable works

The Texas Heart Institute other
Chartered in Austin on private money, including 5 million dollars from the Ray C. Fish Foundation 1962
First successful heart transplant in the United States discovery
The recipient, Everett Thomas, survived months rather than hours 1968
The Liotta-Cooley artificial heart implant discovery
The first total artificial heart placed in a human being — the device is now in the Smithsonian 1969
Cullen Cardiovascular Surgical Research Laboratory other
Founded to develop mechanical circulatory support devices 1971
Cardiovascular Diseases: Bulletin of the Texas Heart Institute other
Renamed the Texas Heart Institute Journal in 1982 1974
100,000 Hearts: A Surgeon's Memoir other
One of 12 books, alongside more than 1,400 scientific papers 2012

Life in brief

with age at each point

August 22, 1920 aged 0 Born in Houston to a prominent dentist His grandfather Daniel Denton Cooley helped found the Houston Heights.
1941 aged ~21 Leaves the University of Texas with a zoology degree and three years on the basketball team He arrived on a basketball scholarship and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
November 29, 1944 aged 24 Assists at the first blue-baby operation at Johns Hopkins Alfred Blalock operated, using the procedure Vivien Thomas had devised.
August 3, 1962 aged 41 Charters the Texas Heart Institute Funded privately, largely by Houston oil money.
1968 aged ~48 Performs the first successful heart transplant in the United States Everett Thomas, 47, survived months rather than hours.
April 4, 1969 aged 48 Implants the first total artificial heart in a human being Haskell Karp lived about 65 hours on the device, received a donor heart, and died of infection the next day.
1988 aged ~68 Files for bankruptcy protection after his real estate investments collapse He spoke about the losses openly for the rest of his life.
2007 aged ~87 Makes peace with DeBakey after roughly 40 years without contact Cooley's surgical society honored DeBakey, who then admitted Cooley to the society bearing his own name.
November 18, 2016 aged 96 Dies at home in Houston at 96 He was buried at Glenwood Cemetery.