Correspondence, Denton Cooley to C. Walton Lillehei reporting successful repair of ventricular septal defect in Texas

Correspondence, Denton Cooley to C. Walton Lillehei reporting successful repair of ventricular septal defect in Texas

Open Heart Surgery

Denton A. Cooley (1920- ) received his medical training at Johns Hopkins University where he obtained a doctor of medicine degree in 1944. While at Johns Hopkins, Cooley assisted Dr. Alfred Blalock in the first successful insertion of a Blalock-Taussig shunt to palliate symptoms associated with Tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect. In 1951 Cooley became associate professor of surgery at Baylor University College of Medicine in Houston, Texas and was a member of the faculty there for 18 years.

Denton A. Cooley

"C, 1957," Box 91, C. Walton Lillehei papers, uarc2000-7, University of Minnesota Archives

University of Minnesota

16-Apr-56

C. Walton Lillehei

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Document

eng

oh0149

Open Heart Surgery

BAYLOR UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
TEXAS MEDICAL CENTER
HOUSTON, TEXAS

DEPARTMENT OF SURGERY
April 16, 1956


Dr. C. Walton Lillehei
Department of Surgery
University of Minnesota Hospital
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Dear Walt:

I tried to call you recently to let you know of our good fortune
with the patient with the acquired perforation of the ventricular
septum. I operated upon him about two weeks ago and discovered quite
a large perforation in the posterior ventricular septum. The perforation
was at least three centimeters long and about two centimeters wide. It
lay behind the posterior leaflet of the tricuspid valve and was in proximity
to an aneurysm of the posterior reight ventricular wall. I closed the
defect using five black silk sutures and a piece of Ivalon. Up until this
time he has made a satisfactory recovery and I believe that he will survive
the operation unless something comes along to alter his course of recovery.
We used a flow rate of approximately two leters per minute and he tolerated
the period of 21 minutes with the heart open without too much difficulty.

I thank you for all of your good advice and appreciate very much
your generous help. Again let me congratulate you on your brillant
achievements. Also, on your election to the American Surgical. I look
forward to seeing you at many of these meetings and am also anxious to
hear your experiences at the meeting of the American Thoracic.

Sincerely yours,
Denton
Denton A. Cooley, M.D.

DAC:ll

Paper