By Rose Sumer

When surgeon and former gymnast Courtney (Cook) Stephenson (D.O. ’97) moved to Charlotte, N.C., she proved that one person could make a difference for thousands. Now, as director of fetal therapy at the Charlotte Fetal Care Center (CFCC), she is one of 38 doctors in the United States skilled in fetoscopic laser ablation, a non-invasive surgery used to treat Twin-Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS). The CFCC is the only hospital offering the procedure in the Southeast.

TTTS is a prenatal life-threatening abnormality that affects nearly 15 percent of all identical twins sharing a placenta in utero. The placenta has to be shared by two fetuses, and many times blood flow is not balanced—one fetus receives nearly all the blood while the other does not receive much. This results in volume overload or a hypertensive state for one fetus and dehydration for the other. 

“Women come from all over, and it’s always an emergency,” Stephenson says. “Their babies are in jeopardy, and we have to move quickly.”

When Stephenson performs fetoscopic laser ablation surgery with her medical team, she first places a 2.5 mm scope into the patient’s uterus to map the placental blood vessels causing the shunting of blood preferentially toward one fetus. Next, she uses a laser to photocoagulate or ablate the blood flow. The laser’s heat destroys the rogue vessels. Screens in the operating room project the surgery.  

“This allows the fetuses to stay in place, and grow and develop normally,” she says. 

Stephenson’s view of medicine was shaped by athletics. From age five to 21, she competed in gymnastics and won a bronze medal as an All-American on the balance beam. “The mind-body connection attracted me to osteopathy,” she says. “I always took a holistic approach to my body as an athlete.”

Stephenson says her education at NYIT’s College of Osteopathic Medicine provided an edge on medical rotations, thanks to a solid foundation in subjects such pharmacology. 

“The curriculum formed our minds to think of patients as emotional and physical beings, not just people with illnesses,” Stephenson says. “This has helped me when interacting with pregnant women, who can have tremendous anxieties.”

Stephenson won NYIT’s Janet Glasgow Award, which honors a female physician in the top 10 percent of her class. She went on to complete a residency at New York Methodist Hospital, followed by a fellowship in maternal-fetal medicine at New York University School of Medicine. She joined Carolinas Medical Center’s Maternal-Fetal Medicine Division in August 2004 and performed the region’s first fetoscopic surgery two years later.

In 2007, she sought training in the treatment of TTTS from leading fetal surgeon Timothy Crombleholme, M.D., at the Fetal Care Center of Cincinnati. The skills she acquired enabled her to open the CFCC in 2010. 

Despite her busy schedule today, Stephenson finds time with her two children. “Balancing between being a mother and a physician is tough,” she says. “But the benefit is your children grow up with an awareness of a world outside of them.”

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