Domingo Liotta was born to Italian immigrant parents on November 29th, 1924, in Diamante, Argentina. He received his MD (1949) from the National University of Córdoba, Argentina, He stayed as a Surgical Resident and went on to obtain his Doctorate in Medicine and Surgery (1953). While his doctorate work was on the Clinical Anatomy of Common Bile Duct, his interest changed to cardiology, and he became a General Surgery Resident at the University of Lyon, France, in 1956.
While at the University of Lyon, he trained in thoracic and cardiac surgery and published his early works on a small artificial heart that showed success in small animals. Domingo then left the University of Lyon in 1961 to become Director of the Artificial Heart Program at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. While at the Artificial Heart Program, Domingo successfully developed the Left Ventricular Assist Device in 1963, which grew the Total Artificial Heart. The Total Artificial Heart had its first clinical use in 1969 and became one of the most significant medical advancements of our time.
In 1971, Domingo returned to Argentina as Surgeon-in-Chief at the Italian Hospital of Buenos Aires. During his tenure as Surgeon-in-Chief, he was appointed Secretary of State for Public Health in 1973, where he successfully improved relationships between Argentina and other nations, specifically Israel and China. After signing historic agreements with Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, he established a joint cardiac surgery teaching research program between China and Argentina that lasted 23 years. Domingo would spend his remaining years, from 1997 until his death in 2022, at the University of Morón, Argentina, as Dean of the School of Medicine before his final appointment as Vice-Chancellor in 2013.
Sources
- https://www.texasheart.org/the-institute/about-us/history/
- https://latinxhistory.com/people/domingo-santo-liotta/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1995066/pdf/20070900s00029p393.pdf
- https://web.archive.org/web/20100129174413/http://www.fdliotta.org/curriculum.htm
- https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-31075-1_8
Feature image source: Liotta 2007 Wiki
