Denton Arthur Cooley, MD.

Abstract

Denton Arthur Cooley, MD, a pioneering heart surgeon, died November 18, 2016, at age 96. He was born in Houston, TX, on August 22, 1920, to Ralph Clarkson Cooley and Mary Fraley Cooley. From the beginning, Cooley’s career in medicine and his contributions to humanity seem to have been foreshadowed. His father was a prominent Houston dentist, and the attending obstetrician at his birth was Dr Ernst William Bertner. Bertner would be part of the team that developed the renowned Texas Medical Center where Denton Cooley later established the now world-acclaimed Texas Heart Institute (THI). In the early 1890s, Cooley’s paternal grandfather, Daniel Denton Cooley, helped found the Houston Heights, a major suburb of the growing city of Houston. Denton A. Cooley’s pioneering career spanned the history of modern cardiovascular surgery. Beginning in the late 1940s, he developed many of today’s commonly used cardiovascular procedures and devices. Nevertheless, he is probably best known for performing the first successful human heart transplant in the United States (1968) and the world’s first human implantation of an artificial heart (1969). Many of Cooley’s other contributions, however, are equally important: the first repair of an aortic aneurysm (1949); the first repair of a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm (1954); the first repair of a ventricular septal defect that developed after a heart attack (1956); the first successful carotid endarterectomy (1956); new techniques for repairing diseased heart valves and congenital heart defects…the list goes on to include >30 such firsts. In some way, Cooley participated in every major development in cardiovascular surgery. With characteristic humility, he always said, “My good fortune professionally came from the fact that I began my career when heart surgery was in its infancy, when surgeons were free to discover and innovate. I’ve been a participant in so many breakthroughs primarily because …