Dr. Denton Cooley, famed Houston heart surgeon, dead at 96

[Onkel Neal]

This man was a giant.

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

Cooley had been in declining health the past year, though he'd gone into his office at the heart institute as recently as Monday. He died at home surrounded by family, said officials in the Texas Medical Center.

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.

“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.”

After watching Cooley operate, Barnard had said: "It was the most beautiful surgery I had ever seen in my life...No one in the world, I knew, could equal it ."

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