It’s a first.
Wealthy and powerful people like Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, news anchor Dick Nourse and billionaire John Huntsman are typical recipients of the Utah American Cancer Society’s highest honor, the Sword of Hope Award.
The award, given to honor exceptional contributions to fighting cancer, is also given to physicians known for giving outstanding patient care. But Dennis Leavitt, a recent recipient, is neither.
“I’m a physicist working on radiation therapy techniques,” Leavitt said in a recent interview.
Leavitt, a U professor of radiation oncology and chief of the division of medical physics at the U School of Medicine, is the first physicist to win the award.
According to Leavitt, most people engaged in cancer research have an emotional involvement. For Leavitt, it is the ability to cure problems formerly considered fatal.
Shortly after coming to the U in 1975, a close relative to Leavitt was diagnosed with cancer. Literature said that kind of cancer wasn’t treatable, but Leavitt knew research had found a way to cure it.
“He’s pretty much dedicated his life to eradicating cancer,” said Steve Miser, department manager for radiation and oncology.
The award honors Leavitt for having designed computer programs which allow doctors to use radiation therapy more effectively.
According to Miser, Leavitt’s behind-the-scenes contributions have directly benefited the treatment of breast cancer.
Several years ago, a program he designed took the calculations out of determining radiation doses.
A physician just electronically targets a tumor and the program will compute the prescribed dosage.
The program has been adopted nationally and has significantly improved radiation therapy.
More recently, he designed a program to improve the electron flow in machines which kill tumors with radiation.
As a patient lies on a treatment table, the machine pivots around them shooting electrons at different angles to the same target in the body. Leavitt’s program allows for a more uniform dosage of electrons.
These are aspects of patient care that physicians must rely on technicians to handle.