TMC PULSE

t m c » p u l s e | d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 6 11 Denton A. Cooley, M.D., 1920–2016 In memoriam S t a f f R e p o r t Facing page: Cooley at the Texas Heart Institute in 2014. Credit: Terry Vine Photography Cooley at a patient's bedside in the 1970s. Credit: Texas Heart Institute D r. Denton A. Cooley's fascination with the heart was enduring. "It is one of the only organs that con- stantly has a visible action to it," Cooley told Pulse in 2015. "You can feel your heart beat." Because of that, he said, the heart "has enjoyed sort of mystical or even romantic significance." Cooley, who died Nov. 18 at the age of 96, also enjoyed a near-mystical significance in the world of medicine. The Houston native was a pioneering cardiovascular surgeon who performed the first successful human heart trans- plant in the United States and became the first heart surgeon to implant a total artificial heart in a human. His death is a loss for the Texas Medical Center, for medicine, and for the world. Soon after his passing, former President George H.W. Bush released a statement that articulated the loss felt in Cooley's hometown: "Denton's pioneering contributions to medicine are, of course, legend. But he also was a lifelong and leading citizen of Houston. All of us who call Houston home will always feel blessed to live in the city where Denton founded the Texas Heart Institute, making our hometown the global center of cardio- vascular research and technology. You could even say it helps us sleep a little better at night. And of course Denton was a wonderful husband, father, and friend. He will be greatly missed, but we are happy he can rejoin his beloved Louise." Cooley's wife, Louise, to whom he was married for nearly seven decades, died in October. In the early years of his career, when heart surgery was in its infancy, Cooley operated on a dozen patients a day. "I did the first successful heart trans- plant in the United States, and I was so impressed with the fact that you could actually replace this pump for the whole circulatory system," Cooley told Pulse. "The heart is one of the simplest organs in the body… not nearly as complex as the liver or the kidneys." Just two years ago, at age 94, Cooley worked 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., four days a week. "I've always thought life was like a marathon," Cooley said. "You want to save some effort for the last hundred yards and have a little kick at the finish." Cooley attended The University of Texas, where he was a varsity basketball player. He carried a scar on his chest in the shape of a UT symbol, earned during a social club initiation ceremony. After two years at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Cooley transferred to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, grad- uating in 1944. As an intern at Johns Hopkins, he assisted Alfred Blalock, M.D., in the first "blue baby" operation, named for the skin discoloration caused by a congenital heart defect. Cooley went on to serve as a faculty member at what is now Baylor College of Medicine alongside the late Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., then the chairman of the Baylor department of surgery. The two doctors had a huge, well-publicized falling-out, but made amends before DeBakey died in 2008. The 1950s and '60s ushered in exciting advancements in cardiovascu- lar surgery—from the introduction of open-heart surgery, to transplantation, to mechanical assist devices. Cooley was eager to blaze new trails and, by 1954, was driving the beginnings of pediatric heart surgery at Texas Children's Hospital. At the time, specializing in cardiol- ogy or heart surgery in adults—let alone operating on infants and children—was a new concept. When Cooley was getting started, there wasn't even such a thing as a heart surgeon, said Charles D. Fraser, M.D., Cooley's son-in-law, co-director of the Texas Children's Heart Center and chief of the division of congenital heart surgery at Baylor. "He was a surgeon who operated on the stomach, the gallbladder, the thy- roid, the lung, the esophagus and, oh, by the way, also the heart," Fraser told Pulse in 2015. "Texas Children's was one of the birthplaces of pediatric care under his visionary pioneering. It was just them taking on the problems and figuring out ways to fix them." The Texas Medical Center was growing at that time, and Cooley saw an opportunity. He founded the Texas Heart Institute in 1962 and served as its surgeon-in-chief for more than 40 years. "Dr. Cooley wanted to create an entity that would try, through research, to help people with cardiovascular disease," James T. Willerson, M.D., pres- ident of the Texas Heart Institute, told Pulse in 2014. "He and his colleagues at the time were doing most of the heart surgery for the entire United States, in adults and children. But he wanted to do more than the surgery, and he believed that he could establish a Texas Heart Institute that would be involved in research and education—the educa- tion of young doctors, in all facets of cardiovascular disease." I've always thought life was like a marathon. You want to save some effort for the last hundred yards and have a little kick at the finish. — DENTON A. COOLEY, M.D. Over the years, Cooley and his team performed more than 120,000 open heart operations. Patients came from around the world to be treated by Cooley, whose oper- ating rooms were often crowded with surgeons who wanted to watch the master at work. Cooley and his wife, Louise, had five daughters, one of whom preceded them in death, as well as 16 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. "From a personal standpoint, I have always believed that a man who is going to get ahead has to have a balanced life," Cooley told Pulse. "I've tried, for most of my life, to give my first attention to my patients and to my practice, but also to my family." Cooley will be remembered for his technical expertise and speed, his breadth of experience, and his judgment about how best to help individual patients. Willerson told Pulse that Cooley was "probably the very best heart surgeon who has ever lived."

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