Upon completing his medical training, Dr. Denton Cooley entered the full-time medical faculty of Baylor College of Medicine, where he served from 1951 to 1969, when he resigned to become chief surgeon at the Texas Heart Institute. The recipient of more than 120 honors and awards and a member of over 50 professional societies around the world, Dr. Cooley has contributed to the techniques for repair and replacement of diseased heart valves and is widely known for his pioneering surgical treatment of cardiac anomalies of infants and children. Dr. Cooley and his team have performed over 100,000 open heart operations at his hospital.

Dr. Cooley believes his major accomplishment has been the creation of the Texas Heart Institute and developing a school of surgery.  More than 800 surgeons are members of the Cooley Surgical Society. He is perhaps most widely known for surgically implanting the first artificial heart in a human.