Cardiac Cowboys

The Heroic Invention of Heart Surgery

Gerald Imber

• Publisher: Post Hill Press
• Year: 2024
• Edition: 0
• eBook ISBN:
  9798888452790
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medicine Biographies

Cardiac Cowboys is the dramatic story of five deeply flawed geniuses who together—and in competition with each other—invented open-heart surgery against all conventional medical wisdom and saved millions of lives. A decade after World War II, there was still no such thing as open-heart surgery, and yet half a million Americans were dying from heart disease every year. One in a hundred children would suffer and die from congenital heart disease as well, and doctors did little other than predict their deaths. After the first daring operation in 1954 and through the next three decades, five heroic surgeons braved the scorn of their peers, withstood fierce desperation, and faced possible death in order to devise procedures that would save overwhelming numbers of those doomed children and provide hope for a new life to all manner of heart-failing individuals. Devising and mastering heart transplants and bypass surgery, they invented artificial heart valves, the lifesaving pacemaker, and worked toward the holy grail of an artificial heart as their private and professional lives imploded. The story of the Cardiac Cowboys, their outsized personalities, and often self-destructive behavior is a saga more thrilling and exhilarating than fiction.

Table of contents

• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Cardiac Cowboys
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE: Houston, December 14, 1964
• CHAPTER TWO: 1948
• Chapter Three: The Race To Conquer The Heart
• CHAPTER FOUR: Beginning
• CHAPTER FIVE: Lewis And Lillehei
• CHAPTER SIX: The Next Step
• CHAPTER SEVEN: Walt Lillehei
• CHAPTER EIGHT: Gregory Glidden
• CHAPTER NINE: Success Meets Conflict
• CHAPTER TEN: Sowing The Seeds
• CHAPTER ELEVEN: Problems From Success
• CHAPTER TWELVE: Houston
• CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Barnard
• CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Cape Town
• CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Famous
• CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Minneapolis
• CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: New York
• CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Houston, December 3, 1967
• CHAPTER NINETEEN: The Artificial Heart
• CHAPTER TWENTY: St. Paul, January 15, 1973: The Trial
• CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Palo Alto, 1966: Radical Perseverance
• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Debakey
• CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: Changes
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Life Changes For Denton Cooley
• CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Debakey At Ninety-Seven
• CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Rapprochement
• Epilogue
• Cardiac Cowboys Timeline
• Acknowledgments