Dr Bassin

Through his ongoing training and research, Dr Bassin continues to offer his patients the best options for treatment. This can include traditional open heart surgery, minimally invasive surgery or innovative robotic surgery.

Get to know Levi

Anyone who meets Dr Bassin would agree that he ‘lives and breathes’ cardiac surgery. Dr Bassin’s path of training to be a surgeon took him many years and to many surgical departments where he continued to feed his thirst for surgical knowledge and any new and innovative technologies he could apply to his surgical practice. While some doctors view their training years as a tough road that they must endure, he took every opportunity to learn and felt privileged to be training and operating beside mentors and colleagues whom he admired and respected. As a result of the generosity of his teachers and mentors, Dr Bassin also believes in the importance of training the next generation of young doctors and is actively involved in medical education and surgical training — paying it forward, as he sees it.

Education & Training

A native Sydney boy, Levi is a graduate of Sydney Boys High School. He then started his tertiary education with a degree in computer science at the University of Sydney. This was an interesting precursor to his Medical School education from the University of Sydney. Dr Bassin has been able to marry these skills during his career when undertaking research projects and completing a PhD in cardiac electrophysiology.

His postgraduate medical training started as an intern and resident at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney and Wagga Wagga Base Hospital and he then went on to complete his cardiothoracic surgical training at Royal North Shore and Prince of Wales Hospitals, where he earned his FRACS qualification (Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons).

He also has a strong interest in academic surgery and medical research. During his specialty training, Dr Bassin pursued his PhD from the University of Sydney in cardiac electrophysiology which explored the mechanisms of hypothermia mediated ventricular arrhythmias. He spent time in research labs at the Kolling Institute at Royal North Shore Hospital as well as the University of Tasmania.

In the world of cardiothoracic surgery, ongoing education is critical, as medical advances continue to deliver better solutions and outcomes. Dr Bassin’s sub-speciality fellowship training at the Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, focused on complex valvular and heart failure surgery as well as minimally invasive techniques. He also undertook a dedicated period of training in the cardiac catheterisation laboratory, focused on transcatheter valve therapies (TAVI). Dr Bassin’s additional overseas training was dedicated to learning and adopting robotic surgery techniques.

Dr Bassin lives in the Upper North Shore of Sydney with his wife and two sons. He describes himself as being as passionate about flying aeroplanes as he is about cardiac surgery. In his (limited) free time you will find him enjoying the beautiful outdoors, flying or reading.

Qualifications

2003 BSc (Comp Science) Univ of Sydney
2007 MBBS (Hons) Univ of Sydney
2013 PhD Univ of Sydney
2015 FRACS (Cardiothoracic Surgery)
2015 Advanced Cardiac Surgery Fellow, Harvard Medical School