"I feel it's part of the story": Domingo Liotta, the Argentine who transplanted the first artificial heart 50 years ago – 04/04/2019

This Thursday marks 50 years of first total artificial heart transplant, technique created by the Argentinean doctor Domingo Liotta with his American partner Denton Cooley. On April 4, but in 1969, it was successfully applied to an operation performed in a Texas hospital and marked a "milestone" in cardiovascular surgery.

"I remember it and I still live it today with joy, I think it was a before and after in medicine and I feel part of the story", says Domingo, who is 94 years old, Clarin hours after the fiftieth anniversary of his work.

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Haskell Karp, 47, was a patient with severe heart failure who had suffered several heart attacks. He was operated on at the Texas Herat Institute in Houston.

"From that moment I remember that we had neither fear nor precariousness. We have been investigating and rehearsing for ten years. When we finally had the chance to do it, everything went as planned. It was a success"Remember.

This first artificial heart was active in the patient for five days, until it was again operated, but this time with a real heart of a donor woman: "He took up the challenge that we had this man to survive until the arrival of the new heart," says Liotta, who will celebrate the anniversary at Diamante, Entre Ríos, his hometown and where he is pampered by all the neighbors. In these days there will be many activities and acts in his homage.

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At the same time that Liotta and Cooley managed to use an artificial heart, the first heart transplant was performed in the United States and the Argentinian physician René Favaloro performed the first bypbad, which meant a "revolution" for cardiovascular surgery.

Nowadays, a person can lead a normal life with an artificial heart, but with certain risks: "Of course, medicine has evolved and new technologies have helped. we were sure what we were doing"says the doctor from his home in Morón.

Liotta exercised her activities until 2006, was professor and vice-chancellor emeritus of the University of Morón. In addition to a medical officer of health in 1973, Liotta badumed the role of Health Secretary and was the author of the law 20,748, who created the national public health system The Telam agency has remembered the time when he was working as a personal physician to former president Juan Domingo Perón.

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The original clinical prototype of the Liotta-Cooley total artificial heart was chosen in 2006 for its leading presentation in the Smithsonian Institution's new Treasures of American History exhibition area. Last year also, the legislature of Buenos Aires distinguished the Argentine cardiac surgeon Outstanding Personality of Science.

AS