Posted 11/07/2007 05:00:00 PM by Douglas

Rivalries: Not just for college football and East Coast/West Coast rappers. Sometimes legendary heart surgeons be disrespectin' each otha:

It's considered one of medicine's best-known feuds: two brilliant and egotistical doctors on the frontiers of cardiovascular surgery, whose falling-out divided a community and became the stuff of legend.

Immortalized in a Life magazine cover story, the rift persisted for decades. Although the competition spurred them to achievements that transformed the Texas Medical Center into the world's heart treatment center, the former collaborators avoided each other and barely spoke.

But recently, Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley buried the hatchet.

"I'm glad the rivalry may have passed by," Cooley said on Oct. 27, presenting DeBakey with a lifetime achievement award at a meeting of Cooley's Cardiovascular Surgical Society. "I hope this is not just a temporary truce or cease-fire (but) ... a permanent treaty between us."

Did they settle it with a "heart-surgery off?"