Posted on 11/18/2016 6:58:34 PM PST by EveningStar
Dr. Denton Cooley, a Houston native and a pioneer of heart transplants, died Friday. He was 96.
Born in 1920, Cooley graduated with highest honors from the University of Texas Austin and earned his medical degree from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1944.
Cooley performed the first transplant of a human heart in the United States in 1968. The following year, he became the first surgeon to implant an artificial heart in a human.
(Excerpt) Read more at click2houston.com ...
I know a guy that has a transplanted heart.
Doctors Michael Debakey and Denton Cooley made Houston the center of the heart surgery universe. What a legacy, measured in lives saved and extended.
I was fascinated by these surgeons as a kid...Barnard, DeBakey, Cooley...I was 10 or 11 I think, and I read everything that was printed about them.
I thought Dr. Christian Bernhard was the 1st.
First in the world. Cooley was first in the US.
Oh right, Bernhard was South African if I remember correctly.
“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.””
What a difference these great doctors have made!!
R.I.P. Dr. Cooley
A woman I work with had a heart transplant about 7 or 8 years ago. Her heart was damaged when she gave birth to her daughter. The heart in her chest came from a boy who was killed in a car wreck. Right before her transplant she was very weak and got exhausted walking down the hall. Now she is able to live a normal life and see her daughter grow up. It’s a miracle, really. Thank God for those pioneers.
RIP.
I used to work in a lab near Debakey’s office at Baylor in Houston. I saw him a time or two. It was as if he was a demigod or hero at that place, with good reason. Cooley and Debakey were giants among us little people, and they were greatly respected.
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