This Chronicle story does a nice job reporting on Dr. Billy Cohn, one of newer wave of cardiovascular surgeons who are fulfilling the legacy of great heart surgeons at Houston’s famed Texas Medical Center that Drs. Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley began.
Dr. Cohn, 43, has already improved the relatively new method of operating on a heart that is still beating by inventing a cardiac stabilizer that secures the part of the organ that needs surgical attention while the rest of the heart continues to pump blood. Moreover, Dr. Cohn is one of the leaders in a movement within cardiovascular surgery that is attempting to make heart surgery less costly and burdensome to the patient. Eventually, this movement among heart surgeons believes that open-heart surgery will be done without cutting into a patient’s chest.
Dr. Cohn grew up in Houston, attended Memorial High School, and has recently returned to Houston from Boston to practice at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital and the Texas Heart Institute. The entire article is well worth reading and provides a good summary of developments in heart surgery in the Medical Center.
As an aside, whenever I see an article about a doctor such as this one, I cannot help but recall noted medical academician Dr. Walter M. Kirkendall‘s (my late father) standard observation about such articles:
“Good advertising.”