NEWS

Del. home to first U.S. black female transplant surgeon

Jen Rini
The News Journal

Before every organ transplant Dr. Velma Scantlebury takes a quiet moment by the surgical sink praying for God's guidance.

"Help me to do the best I can. My hands are your hands," is the prayer, says Scantlebury, the first female African-American transplant surgeon in the United States.

Over her 40-year long career Scantlebury, who now heads Christiana Care Health System's out-patient kidney transplant program, estimates that she's done over 2,000 organ transplants. The novelty never gets old.

"You still have that little pitter-patter with every single case," she said.

Demure, poised and with an easy smile, Scantlebury has the demeanor of an old-school pediatrician who makes house calls and knows every patient and his or her favorite food. And that's the way she likes it.

From the time she was a little girl growing up on the island of Barbados, she always knew she wanted to be a physician. Her family did not have a long history in the medical field, but she knew one thing was certain: "I loved kids," she said.

When Scantlebury was 13, her parents shipped the family to Brooklyn to give them more educational opportunities, she said. There she jumped headfirst into medicine, volunteering first at King County Hospital in Brooklyn, eventually heading to Columbia University Medical School and completing her residency with Harlem Hospital.

"Gross anatomy was, as gross as it was, a turn-on," Scantlebury said, despite the lingering pickled formaldehyde smell at the end of the day.

"That solidified my decision. I wanted to be able to help people through taking out things and being able to fix them."

Dr. Velma Scantlebury was the nation’s first African American female transplant surgeon. She now practices at Christiana Care in Newark.

At Harlem, Dr. Barbara Barlow, director of pediatric surgery, particularly inspired her with her caring, softly intricate surgical techniques.

"It was a little bit discouraging at the time," Scantlebury said, "because there weren't many females in surgery."

After five years of general surgery, Scantlebury in 1986 took her interest to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine where she completed a clinical fellowship in transplant research specializing in multi-abdominal transplants such as the liver, kidney, pancreas and small bowel.

The 12 fellows aided in about 600 pediatric and adult surgeries a year, she said, but in her second year she focused specifically on pediatric liver transplantation. She worked closely with Dr. Thomas E. Starzl, a surgeon who in 1967 performed the first liver transplant.

The liver, only about four pounds, filters nutrients and breaks down fats, proteins, carbohydrates as well as toxic substances in the blood such as alcohol. When a liver fails, those toxic substances are not filtered properly.

Increasing access to liver transplantation for minorities was a research interest, she said.

"When we looked at people of color," she said. "The disparities was not that African Americans didn't get transplanted that much. There was no avenue for those who were uninsured."

Today, Scantlebury said there aren't such glaring disparities, but there needs to more more education on the benefits of transplantation. With Christiana Care, she has seen people put off transplant surgery in favor of 10 years of dialysis treatment which filters waste, salt and excess fluid from the blood the way a normal kidney would.

"Some people are just not ready. They are fearful," Scantlebury said.

Dr. Velma Scantlebury was the nation’s first African American female transplant surgeon. She now practices at Christiana Care in Newark.

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, 123,900 people need a lifesaving organ transplant, and 78,966 are active wait-list candidates.

Christiana Care handles 358 patients on that wait-list. About 130 on the list have type II diabetes and 64 have Hypertensive nephrosclerosis, a kidney disorder that is sometimes associated with hypertension.

The average age is about 50, Scantlebury said. A bulk of the patients, 160, are between 50 and 60 years of age. Seventy-four people are between 35 and 49 years of age. The cut-off age to seek a transplant is 75.

"We know our patients. We are not a large program where we are not familiar with our patients," she said, adding that the 8-year-old program is strategically placed so Delawareans, especially those downstate, do not have to travel to Maryland or Pennsylvania for a kidney transplant.

"That's a hike for most people," she said.

The only hitch is, there is a lot of competition for kidney donors, she added. On average people are on the donor wait-list for a least five years.

Scantlebury gets calls daily from donors listed with the United Network for Organ Sharing, and her team has 60 minutes to evaluate whether or not they have someone on the wait-list who is a match.

Surgeons have to transplant the whole kidney, not part of it as in some liver transplants, which can use a lobe of the liver insted of the entire organ. Scantlebury, who turns 60 in October, recalls the first time she was called into assist a kidney transplant as a fellow.

She was tasked with laboring over in the corner cleaning the fat off of the kidney and dissecting the blood vessels.

"I go, 'Okay, I should have looked this up before I got here,'" Scantlebury joked. "I was sweating. Thrown to the wolves."

Though nervous, she wasn't swayed off her course. As she went through her fellowship, she recalled that her gender or race seemed insignificant in the big scheme of things. She didn't see herself as a trailblazer.

"In Pittsburg nobody gives a damn who you were. You were there to work," Scantlebury said.

But, she still felt like she constantly had to prove herself, which fired her up even more. At one point she said she was asked if she wanted to do a surgery.

"I said, 'Why do you think I'm here?'"

In 1989, she joined the University of Pittsburg faculty and had her chance. It was a liver transplant, specifically to remove a cancer-infested liver.

"We go into to see the patient and the family. They were in shock. To say the least they were not very pleased I was going to be the surgeon," she said.

Through honesty and persistence, however, she was able to bond with the family and eventually they became good friends.

Her time in Pittsburg shaped who she became as a surgeon. It was a time of learning and reflecting, she said.

"For the first time I felt like Dorothy in 'The Wizard of Oz,'" she said, recalling a time when she was walking on campus before that first surgery.

"I actually looked to see if anyone was looking and I jumped to try and see if I could click my heels. Then I knew I was in."