Dr. Denton Cooley in Argentina (1969) - The JR Gonzales Collection

Duration: 30:39:00

Year Published: 1969

Sound: sound

Description: This Argentine television news coverage captures the arrival of heart surgeons Dr. Domingo Liotta, Dr. Cristobal Martinez-Bordiu, Dr. Denton Cooley, and Dr. Robert Leachman at Ministro Pistarini International Airport in Buenos Aires on May 1, 1969. All four stop to answer questions about their work and their impressions of the Argentine capital from members of the press. Later, television news reporters follow Cooley to the local children’s hospital, where Cooley joined Chief of Cardiology Dr. Eduardo Galindez for a heart surgery. The visit to South America came soon after Liotta and Cooley made history for performing the first orthotopic heart transplant using a total artificial heart. Liotta, an Argentine native, developed the cardiac prosthesis at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Cooley, professor of surgery at Baylor and president of the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, implanted the artificial heart inside Haskell Karp at St. Luke’s on April 4, 1969. As the hospital’s chief of cardiology, Leachman also played a role in the operation. Karp lived for 64 hours, during which time a human heart was located for transplant. Karp died of pneumonia soon after receiving the new heart. The American College of Surgeons later reprimanded Cooley for performing the surgery without the authorization of Dr. Michael DeBakey, Baylor’s chancellor and chairman of the department of surgery.