The humble icon

Rao R. Ivatury, M.D., was an internationally-acclaimed surgeon, teacher and scholar who dedicated his life to caring for others.

While a junior faculty member in the VCU Department of Surgery nearly 20 years ago, Michel B. Aboutanos, M.D., H’00, received a phone call that still impacts his life today.

The soft, measured voice he heard on the line belonged to his mentor, the world-renowned surgeon and then-medical director of the VCU Level I Trauma Center, Rao R. Ivatury, M.D.

A competitive scholarship had surfaced, Ivatury informed his mentee, and he had 24 hours to apply. Aboutanos recalls doubting his chances to earn the prestigious scholarship from the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, and feeling confused about why Ivatury suggested the opportunity.

“Then I was awarded the scholarship, and he was the first to congratulate me,” says Aboutanos, who has led trauma care at VCU Medical Center since 2013. “I didn’t believe, but he did. That was Ivatury. He saw more in you than you saw in yourself.”

According to Aboutanos, the scholarship led to the foundation of VCU’s role and lasting impact shaping trauma care in Virginia, as well as in developing nations through International Trauma Systems Development and Injury Prevention.

Sadly, Ivatury passed away in February 2024, only days before his legacy on the MCV Campus was celebrated with the announcement of the new Rao Ivatury, M.D., Endowed Professorship.

At the event, Arun Ivatury, the late surgeon’s youngest son, thanked a full room of doctors, nurses and first responders for the outpouring of stories about his father and underscored a common theme he heard throughout.

“What people remember even more than his abilities as a surgeon was that he was a kind, humble man,” Arun Ivatury shared with the crowd. “When you think about the Ivatury Professorship, we hope you remember that he embraced everyone's humanity and wanted to create an environment where a team can care for people and that we as human beings take care of each other.”

Endowed professorships and chairs represent the highest academic honor a university can bestow on a faculty member. The professorship in Ivatury’s name serves as a lasting tribute to his legacy and influence in the School of Medicine and beyond.

He was a giant, but you’d never know it

Ivatury served as chief of trauma, critical care and emergency surgery on the MCV Campus from 1998 to 2012, and he is largely credited for shaping the field of modern trauma surgery and care.

He elevated trauma at VCU to national prominence, and the concepts, strategies and techniques he developed during his career of more than 30 years represent many of today’s best practices.

Among his many major contributions to the discipline were understanding the need to stabilize a patient before operating, and the importance of improving the pre-hospital care provided by the paramedics and emergency medical technicians at the scene of an incident. Ivatury also cared deeply for the Panamerican Trauma Society – an organization that seeks to improve trauma care throughout North, Central and South America – and he worked hard to establish its headquarters at VCU Medical Center since 2010.

In addition to his intellectual and surgical achievements, he also earned an equally significant reputation as a humble and dedicated educator and colleague.

Those who can do and teach

Ivatury’s teaching lineage includes many of the world’s best trauma surgeons. Chief among them is Thomas M. Scalea, M’78, who trained with Ivatury at Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center in the Bronx during the height of violence in the mid-1980s New York City.

“He was only focused on making other people better, and he always deflected attention away from himself and toward other people,” says Scalea, now physician-in-chief of the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center, and the Honorable Francis X. Kelly Distinguished Professor of Trauma Surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Following a fellowship under Ivatury’s guidance, Scalea led trauma care at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn for more than a decade. The near-constant collaboration the two surgeons maintained sparked many of the practices that are now the standard of care in operating rooms around the world.

“All of that work we did in the late 1980s and early 1990s about the physiology of shock and shock resuscitation came from this synergy of us bouncing ideas off of each other between the Bronx and Brooklyn,” says Scalea, who also trained Ivatury’s mentee Aboutanos during a fellowship at the University of Maryland Medical Center. “I have never equaled that much understanding about a disease in such a short period of time until COVID.”

Arun Ivatury, speaking on behalf of his older brother, Gautam Ivatury, also praised their late mother, Leela Kriplani, M.D., an anesthesiologist and her husband’s fiercest advocate.

“Our parents were together for 48 years,” Arun Ivatury says. “I know that all he accomplished, both in Richmond and in New York, would not have been possible without her support.”

Aboutanos says that Ivatury was proud to learn about the plan to endow a professorship in his honor, and that Ivatury's legacy lives on through the thousands of lives that are saved by the trauma center's team of professionals who work tirelessly to continue Ivatury's vision.

Despite the timing of Rao Ivatury’s death, Scalea — the initiator and driving force behind the endowed professorship — takes solace in knowing that his mentor’s name will endure.

“As long as there is a Virginia Commonwealth University, there is going to be a Rao Ivatury Professorship,” Scalea says. “In that way he will live forever, and what can be better than that?”

To make a gift in support of the Rao Ivatury, M.D., Endowed Professorship, please contact Andrew Hartley, director of development, at 804-305-3055 or aphartle@vcu.edu, or make an online gift now.