Dr. Velma Scantlebury is the nation’s first African-American female transplant surgeon. She has performed over 800 live organ transplants. The mother of two currently serves as the Associate Director of the Kidney Transplant Program in Delaware at Christiana Care Health System. She holds extensive research credit in the outcomes of organ donations and transplants in African-Americans.
During her first year at Columbia medical school, Scantlebury decided to become a surgeon. She told the Alumni News: “While everybody else seemed eager to get out of the anatomy classroom, because of the smell, I was fascinated by all the connections…the nerves and muscles and circulatory system…. It was a really big turn-on for me to go from body to body and study the different functions and abnormalities.” The surgery faculty at Columbia tried to discourage her. Her preceptor offered to recommend her for pediatric training instead.
At a panel discussion of black transplant surgeons, reported in Awareness magazine, Scantle bury recounted, “I was told that my hands were too small and I was the wrong color.” She told the Alumni News: “Small hands can be better than big hands in surgery, especially when you’re working on kids.” And Scantlebury was stubborn: “I had to force myself to be aggressive…Maybe I chose to always be up against another hurdle, maybe that’s what makes me thrive. I don’t like being bored.”
Scantlebury spent the next five years as an intern and resident in general surgery at Harlem Hospital in New York City. There she found a mentor in Dr. Barbara Barlow, director of pediatric surgery. “She was very encouraging,” Scantlebury told the Alumni News. “She led me, taught me, gave me advice, groomed me, and told me I needed to do research.” During her third year of residency Scantlebury spent six months assisting Dr. Mark Hardy in his research on kidney transplantation in animals. Her interest shifted from pediatric surgery to transplantation.
Many of Scantleburys patients are uninsured or underinsured. She often sees minority patients whose transplanted kidneys fail because they can’t afford the medications to keep them working properly. She works with social workers to get government funding for her patients, most of whom cannot afford Medicare. Her goal is to educate African Americans about the options available for transplants. Many are unaware of the funding offered to help those in need.
Scantlebury-White’s landmark research focused on pregnancy following transplant surgery. At the time women were discouraged from becoming pregnant after a transplant because of the possible effects of post-transplant drugs on the fetus. So Scantlebury studied the incidence of premature births and birth defects among women who were already pregnant at the time of their transplant. Her results showed that women should wait at least 12 to 15 months after their transplant before becoming pregnant.
One of her current and future endeavors is to increase the longevity of the transplant patient. The average survival time for a kidney transplant recipient is 10 to 15 years for those who received their kidney from a live donor and eight years for those who received a kidney from a cadaver.
She says she refuses to retire until there are 10 more black women in transplant surgery in the United States. Currently, there are nine.