The Hearts of Texas

Eight surgeons on four continents have now performed heart transplants, but the one who stepped most prominently last week from under the nonglare lights of his operating theater into the spotlight of world attention was a tall Texan. Denton Arthur Cooley, 47. The mere fact that Dr. Cooley did three heart transplants within five days was a notable achievement. To Cooley himself, this was incidental and to some extent accidental--the timing of transplants depends on having suitable donors and recipients available simultaneously. The operations, says Cooley, are technically less difficult than many other open-heart procedures, of which he has performed no fewer than 4,000.

Son of a Houston dentist, Cooley starred in basketball and made Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Texas. After getting his M.D. degree at Johns Hopkins University, he stayed on as an intern and resident at the Hopkins' University Hospitals and served as what he calls "a very junior assistant" to the great surgeon Alfred Blalock, who was soon to perform the world's first blue-baby operations. That association determined Cooley's future course, and he has been a heart man ever since.

Miniaturized Surgery. After a year in London working with Britain's noted heart surgeon Lord Brock, Cooley returned to his native Houston and was associated at Baylor University College of Medicine with Surgeon Michael E. DeBakey (TIME cover, May 28, 1965). The DeBakey-Cooley team at Methodist Hospital pioneered many innovations in heart surgery before Cooley moved next door to St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, which is also affiliated with Baylor. There he has established an independent reputation as one of the greatest of heart surgeons and almost certainly the world's greatest in the incredibly difficult miniaturized surgery on hearts of infants. He has performed at least 1,000 open-heart operations on babies less than one year old.

Cooley is a demon for speed. In his first heart transplant, he performed the actual implantation of the donor organ in Everett C. Thomas' chest in 31 min. His second, for Recipient James B. Cobb, took 42 min. Cooley's third transplant, which took about 30 min., raised a legal question. The heart came from Clarence Nicks, 32, who died after being beaten in a barroom brawl. Nicks showed no brain-wave activity and had had no reflexes for hours before his doctors shut off the machine that had been oxygenating the blood in his lungs. There was, therefore, no question that Nicks was legally dead. But since he had been involved in what could become a prosecution for homicide, his body was technically evidence. In Texas, it is illegal to put "evidentiary material" beyond the reach of a prosecutor--and that would include Nicks's heart, which would certainly be beyond reach inside a transplant patient's chest. Anticipating the problem. Cooley had a talk with the county medical examiner, who finally agreed to take no action under this provision. Only then did Cooley give Nicks's heart to John Stuckwish, 62, of Alpine, Texas.

Of Cooley's three patients, Thomas continued to make good progress a week after his transplant; Stuckwish, at week's end, was still battling for life. Cobb died 2 1/2 days after the operation, of obscure causes. But it was certainly not because his new heart had failed. It was in such good condition, said Cooley, that he would have transplanted it to a second patient if a suitable recipient had been available.

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