Dr Maurice Lev (1908-1994) portrait

Maurice Lev (1908-1994) was an American cardiologist.

Lev was a pioneering American cardiovascular pathologist whose landmark contributions transformed the understanding of congenital heart disease and cardiac conduction abnormalities.

Known as “the man of a thousand hearts” and revered globally as the “dean of cardiovascular pathology,” Lev’s career was marked by an exceptional dedication to teaching, anatomical precision, and tireless research that spanned over five decades. His meticulous serial-section analyses helped resolve key controversies in cardiology and continue to inform clinical practice and surgical technique today.

Lev was instrumental in describing the conduction system in both normal and malformed hearts, leading to his eponymous association with Lev’s disease—a progressive sclerodegenerative condition of the conduction system observed in the aging heart. Eponymised along with Jean Lenègre (1904–1999) for Lenègre-Lev disease, a major cause of atrioventricular block.

A prolific scholar and passionate educator, Lev authored or co-authored over 500 publications and several foundational texts, including Cardiac Surgery and the Conduction System and The Pathology of Congenital Heart Disease.s

Biography
  • 1908 – Born November 13 in St. Joseph, Missouri, to Russian immigrant parents
  • 1916 – Lost his mother at age 8; raised in New York by his grandfather, a rabbi
  • 1930 – Completed B.S. degree at New York University
  • 1934 – Received M.D. from Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska
  • 1935–1940 – Residency in pathology at Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago
  • 1941 – Became Diplomat in Pathologic Anatomy
  • 1942–1946 – Served in the U.S. Army; rose to Lieutenant Colonel and commanded the Fourth Medical Laboratory in the European Theater
  • 1943 – Became Diplomat in Clinical Pathology
  • 1946–1947 – Assistant Professor of Pathology, Creighton University
  • 1947–1951 – Instructor (1947), Assistant Professor (1947–1948), and Associate Professor (1948–1951) of Pathology, University of Illinois
  • 1951–1957 – Director of Laboratories, Mt. Sinai Hospital, Miami Beach, Florida
  • 1957–1982 – Director, Congenital Heart Disease Research and Training Center, Hektoen Institute, Chicago
  • 1964 – Co-described Lenègre-Lev disease (with Jean Lenègre) [PMID 14237429]
  • 1966 – Earned a Master’s in Philosophy from Northwestern University, thesis: Whitehead’s Theory of Evolution
  • 1982–1988 – Director of Clinical Laboratories, Deborah Heart and Lung Center, New Jersey
  • 1984 – Golden Merit Award, American Medical Association, recognizing 50 years of distinguished service
  • 1988–1994 – Associate Director, Congenital Heart and Conduction System Center, Christ Hospital, Illinois; Professor of Pathology at Rush University
  • 1993 – Honored at the First Maurice Lev Lectureship; received tribute from Creighton University Class of 1948
  • 1994 – Final publication: Pulmonary Valve Eccentricity in D-Transposition; died February 4 in Oak Lawn, Illinois

Medical Eponyms
Lev’s Disease and the Aging Conduction System

Maurice Lev’s pivotal work in the 1940s and 1950s established a clear pathological basis for age-related atrioventricular (AV) block. Through serial histologic sectioning of normal hearts across the lifespan, he identified fibrofatty degeneration and sclerosis in the His bundle and bundle branches, particularly on the left side of the cardiac skeleton. This progressive deterioration, occurring without underlying structural heart disease, became recognized as an idiopathic form of AV block in the elderly and was later eponymously termed Lev’s disease.

Lenègre-Lev syndrome (1964)

Acquired complete heart block. Fibrous transformation progressive and slow, of degenerative origin, of the two branches of the bundle of His, resulting in progressive conduction disorders:

  • block of branch with or without hemiblock of the opposite side
  • then complete, paroxysmal then permanent artroventricular (AV) block.

In parallel with French cardiologist Jean Lenègre (1904–1999), Lev independently described this sclerodegenerative process in aging hearts. Their combined findings underpin the modern understanding of Lenègre-Lev syndrome, characterized by conduction disturbances that may progress to complete heart block. Lev’s pathologic insights remain central to the diagnosis and management of bradyarrhythmias in geriatric cardiology.

1964Lenègre, of the Hopital Boucicaut in Paris, described progressive fibrosis of the ventricular conduction system in a series of articles published in French in the 1950s; his first and major reference in English appeared in 1964 as “Etiology and pathology of bilateral bundle branch block in relation to complete heart block

1964Maurice Lev, of the University of Miami, saw a similar sclerodegenerative process, often with calcification, in an older age group publishing “Anatomic basis for atrioventricular block


Major Publications

References

Eponym

Eponymous terms

Eponym

the person behind the name

Doctor in Australia. Keen interest in internal medicine, medical education, and medical history.

BA MA (Oxon) MBChB (Edin) FACEM FFSEM. Emergency physician, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. Passion for rugby; medical history; medical education; and asynchronous learning #FOAMed evangelist. Co-founder and CTO of Life in the Fast lane | Eponyms | Books |

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.