And thank you for all you have done in medical history.


Dr. Denton Arthur Cooley, legendary founder of the Texas Heart Institute and arguably the most gifted heart surgeon of his time, has died. He was 96.

Over four decades, Cooley performed an estimated 65,000 open-heart surgeries at the institute, drawing patients from around the globe. At one time, his team was handling a tenth of all such operations in the United States.

Cooley?s surgeries included two particularly noteworthy ones ? in 1968, the first transplant of a human heart in which the patient lived more than a few weeks; and in 1969, the first implantation of a mechanical heart. The latter, a Kitty Hawk-type of advance, set in motion one of Houston?s signature stories, a rift with Michael E. DeBakey immortalized in a Life cover story as The Feud.

?At the height of his career, he was probably the best known heart surgeon in the world,? said Dr. David Cooper, a professor of surgery at the University of Pittsburgh and author of ?Open Heart: The Radical Surgeons who Revolutionized Medicine.?

Cooley stood above other surgeons because of his speed and technical prowess, a combination once described as ?Woolworth volume and Tiffany quality.?

At the beginning of his career, the device that keeps patients alive during cardiac surgery ? the heart-lung machine ? was still in its infancy, a crude instrument that gave surgeons little time to complete an operation. Cooley performed with such precision that he demonstrated procedures such as bypasses could be safely done. He was among a small group of doctors who ushered heart surgery from a niche field into mainstream medicine.

"I was talking to a pilot friend of mine one time ? he flew 747s ? about Charles Lindbergh," said O.H. "Bud" Frazier, another pioneer of heart surgery at the Texas Heart Institute. "My friend said there's not a pilot alive today that could fly the Spirit of St. Louis by dead reckoning. Dr. Cooley is sort of the same way. There's not a surgeon alive today that could do what he could do." 

he helped to put or medical center on the map, as one of the cities known for the best treatment in the world!! 

Good man! His wife just passed away about a month ago. RIP