Harold C. Pillsbury III, MD, Thomas J. Dark Distinguished Professor and emeritus chair of otolaryngology/head and neck surgery at University of North Carolina (UNC) and executive director of The Children’s Cochlear Implant Center at UNC in Chapel Hill, who is 70 years old, also recently decided to scale back his work. He stepped down as department chair, but will still perform otological surgeries. “I didn’t make this decision because I can’t perform surgeries, but because I have a certain sense that if a complication would occur, that colleagues and patients will think I was too old to do it,” he said. He will now work as a part-time professor at the clinic, and will refer neurotological surgeries to his junior colleagues.
