14 DAY TRIAL // Nearly five decades ago, on April 4, 1969, American surgeon Denton Arthur Cooley made medical history when he successfully fitted a 47-year-old man by the name of Haskell Karp with the world's first artificial heart.
The machine kept the patient alive for 65 hours, during which time Denton Arthur Cooley and his team found a suitable donor heart and rushed him into surgery again, this time to remove the artificial organ and replace it with the real deal.
Admittedly, 47-year-old Haskell Karp unfortunately passed away a couple of days after this second surgical intervention. Even so, the case made surgeon Denton Arthur Cooley worldwide famous and forever transformed medicine.
After all, the artificial heart did what it was supposed to do and kept the patient alive while his doctors tried to find a donor organ for him. The fact that the transplant surgery didn't work out quite as planned is a whole other story.
The artificial heart is now on display at the Smithsonian Institute
The machine that surgeon Denton Arthur Cooley implanted in Haskell Karp's chest to replace his heart back in April 1969 is now on display at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC, US.
The first-of-its-kind device, shown in the photos accompanying this article, is made of a special type of plastic and fabric. It might look rudimentary, but decades ago, when it was created, it was top-notch.
The machine used a double pneumatic pump to keep blood flowing at a steady pace. Using an exterior console, medical expert Denton Arthur Cooley and his team could regulate Haskell Karp's blood flow and even his blood pressure.
Interestingly, DM tells us that, when he performed his ground-breaking surgery on 47-year-old Haskell Karp, Denton Arthur Cooley was widely criticized and accused of overstepping ethical boundaries.
This happened because he implanted the device without waiting for the medical community's approval.
