New transplant team joins faculty of Boonshoft School of Medicine

Dr. R. Brian Stevens

Residents of the Dayton region needing organ transplants will now have access to even more organ transplantation services with the addition of three new transplant surgeons to the Miami Valley Hospital Transplant Center and the faculty of the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine.

R. Brian Stevens, M.D, Ph.D., FACS, will serve as the new surgical director of the Miami Valley Hospital (MVH) transplant program and professor of surgery in the Boonshoft School of Medicine. Lucile Wrenshall, M.D., Ph.D., FACS, is the new director of the living donor kidney program at MVH and professor of surgery, and Tamer Malik, M.D., FACS, has joined the program as a transplant surgeon and assistant professor of surgery. The new physicians join Augustus Eduafo, M.D., clinical professor of internal medicine, and William Rundell Jr., M.D., clinical professor of surgery. Dr. Rundell has been performing transplant surgeries at MVH for more than 30 years.

Dr. Stevens and Dr. Wrenshall trained at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, home to one of the oldest and most successful transplant centers in the world. Dr. Malik completed a Cardiovascular Research Fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard University, Boston, and a fellowship in abdominal solid organ transplant surgery at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. All three are fellowship trained in transplant surgery and fellows of the American College of Surgeons, the most rigorous accreditation possible for surgeons.

Dr. Lucile Wrenshall

Prior to coming to Dayton, Dr. Stevens and Dr. Wrenshall practiced at the University of Nebraska Medical Center where Dr. Stevens served as director of the Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program and director of the Islet and Cell Transplant Program. Dr. Malik served as a surgeon and assistant professor of surgery, transplant division, at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Miami Valley Hospital made history nearly 40 years ago when two of its physicians performed the first ever kidney transplant in Dayton. Since that groundbreaking surgery, hundreds of patients have undergone successful kidney transplants at MVH, the region’s only organ transplant center. The new transplant team plans to expand the types of procedures available locally and conduct clinical and basic research to improve organ transplantation options and outcomes.

In addition to kidney transplantation, the team is trained in hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery. They can provide state-of-the-art care for patients with diseases related to the liver, bile duct and gallbladder.

“Our intent is not simply to do transplants,” said Dr. Stevens, “but to make available to the people in this region the best possible transplant care available in the nation if not the world. And to do it in a very personal way.”

Dr. Tamer Malik

Dr. Wrenshall is one of the first transplant surgeons in the nation to do minimally invasive donor nephrectomy to remove the kidney from a live donor, which results in a smaller incision for the donor and a less-invasive procedure that allows the donor to leave the hospital quickly—usually within 24 to 48 hours. Living donors can now return to a normal lifestyle in a few weeks.

The new team will also focus on cutting-edge research in the transplant field. Joined by their research teams who also made the move to Dayton, the physicians will continue to expand their basic and clinical research into new treatments to minimize the need for aggressive immunosuppression in transplant patients. They are researching new ways to “trick” the patient’s immune system into accepting the new kidney as their own so that it is not rejected.

“There’s always been a very high quality clinical transplant program here,” said Dr. Stevens. “Now we’re going to expand upon it and build a world-class transplant center right here in the Dayton region.”