Dr. Ronald Levine EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION AWARD
2016 DOCTORS’ BALL PHYSICIAN HONOREES
28 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
Dr. Ronald Levine says he’ s spent most of his professional life teaching. Indeed he has, guiding medical students, residents, fellows and colleagues as an obstetrician-gynecologist who helped pioneer the use of what’ s now known as minimally invasive surgery. But the now retired Levine has also always been an avid student himself, learning and applying knowledge that has transformed medical practice worldwide, particularly for women.
With an undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Denver, the New York native was drafted into the infantry at the height of the Korean War, and shortly after was transferred to a medical research lab at Fort Knox. The work there led to an invitation from the University of Louisville to earn a PhD in physiology, but he opted instead to apply to the School of Medicine, with an eye toward eventual research in clinical care.
After a residency in obstetrics and gynecology, Dr. Levine began teaching at U of L and then within his own private practice, arranging to have medical students rotate through.“ I wrote an editorial once called‘ The Pebble Effect,’” Levine says.“ You throw some pebbles in the water, and you make some circles, and the circles go way out beyond your vision. That’ s the effect of teaching, especially in medicine.” It was on the Planned Parenthood national medical committee that Levine recognized the ripple effects of decisions on women’ s health care around the world.
In 1970, colleague Dr. Marvin Yussman returned to Louisville from a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology at Harvard, and showed Dr. Levine a new technique that made it possible for a surgeon to directly view a woman’ s reproductive organs without the need for a major incision. Using an early laparoscope, Levine began to wonder how the new tool might be further developed and used for more complex surgical tasks.
About a decade later at a meeting of the Pan American Fertility Society, a fascinated Levine watched as Dr. Kurt Semm of Germany demonstrated that laparoscopy could be used for treatment as well as for diagnosis, and shortly after, went to Germany himself to study with Semm. Dr. Levine brought the new technique back to Louisville in 1983, and was soon able to demonstrate, as he’ d recognized, that it would forever change not only gynecology, but all sorts of surgery. In particular, he believed that laparoscopic surgery would have enormous benefits for women, enabling them to have many pelvic disorders treated with an overnight rather than weeklong hospital stay, and to return to work in two weeks instead of six.
Newspaper clippings of the time hail him as a pioneer in what was then known as pelviscopic surgery, and describe the first ever American seminars organized by Dr. Levine at Jewish and U of L for physicians from across the country who wanted to learn techniques. Levine went on to co-write five books on laparoscopic surgery, and started an annual training course at U of L( that has instructed more than 500 surgeons from around the world) and also a fellowship in minimally invasive surgery, which has now trained 15 surgeons.
Ultimately, says former patient and longtime friend Jessica Loving, Dr. Levine has been motivated by a determination to enable women to take charge of their health and their lives – and to teach others how to do the same.