Professionelle Patrick KI-Stimme für Content-Erstellung

Patrick

Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. It’s true today, in 2025, just as it was back in the 1960s in the United States—and in Texas, where this story begins. In 1964, a surgeon at the Texas Medical Center told the hospital director that the federal project he’d been working on for the last three years was finally ready. It was a breakthrough that could bring hope and save thousands of lives—a dream come true: the artificial heart. That surgeon was Dr. Domingo Liotta. The person who had to approve testing his invention on patients was Michael DeBakey—one of the world’s most renowned heart surgeons, a pioneer of modern cardiac surgery, and the head of research at the Texas Medical Center. But DeBakey didn’t think the artificial heart was ready, and he refused to authorize its use. Meanwhile, patients kept dying on the operating table, one after another. Then, on April 4, 1969, Dr. Liotta and Dr. Cooley made a bold decision. The wedge resection surgery had failed. With Mr. Karp’s life slipping away, Liotta and Cooley decided to use the artificial heart for the very first time, hoping to keep him alive until a donor could be found. They tried to get DeBakey’s approval, but he was on a plane to Washington. The operation worked. For the first time, an artificial heart was beating inside Haskell Karp’s chest, keeping him alive while he waited for a transplant. Three nights later, , Mrs. Karp’s prayers were answered—a donor heart arrived. Haskell received the transplant successfully, but tragically, he died 31 hours later from a fungal infection in his lungs. DeBakey was furious. He shut down the artificial heart program. Domingo Liotta continued his research in the Texas Heart Institute with Denton Cooley. In 1971, Domingo returned to Argentina, where he had developed the first prototypes of the artificial heart years before, and where he would become one of the country’s most important doctors. That man, that Argentinian doctor… was my father. And this film is his story. My name is Patrick Liotta. I’m the sixth child of Domingo Liotta—the only one who didn’t become a doctor. The black sheep of the family.