Dr. Robert K. Stuart was responsible for all the commotion on the sixth floor. In a race to save a man's life by performing the first bone marrow transplant in South Carolina, he was forced to improvise and do what had to be done to accomplish a very difficult mission. Stuart joined the MUSC faculty in 1985. Having been an attending physician at the Johns Hopkins Medical Center, Stuart gained valuable experience by being a member on their bone marrow transplant team. After his arrival he proposed starting a bone marrow transplant program at the medical center.
Patients do better if they are close to their family and sources of support.
Also having a program here would raise the level of care at MUSC, enabling us to attract top quality staff in the field of hematology and oncology. His plans, however, were of a long-range nature, requiring a great deal of preparation. In January of 1987, what should have been a routine referral went awry. The patient, a young man from Heath Springs, S.C., was suffering from aplastic anemia, a rare disease where the bone marrow fails to provide adequate blood cells to sustain life. He was being maintained with expensive transfusions and antibiotic therapy as a temporary measure.