Jia Xu, MD
Lindsay Kozek, MD
Mass Eye and Ear, Boston, MA
The prestigious VBS Mentorship Award was conferred upon Dr. Lejla Vajzovic, MD, FASRS, by Drs. Avni Finn and Akshay Thomas. The event was not only a recognition of Dr. Vajzovic’s outstanding contributions to mentorship in vitreoretinal surgery, but also an opportunity to delve into her remarkable journey. Dr. Vajzovic, currently director of the Duke vitreoretinal surgery fellowship program, shared insights from her life story during an interview conducted by Drs. Finn and Thomas, who were her former surgical fellows.
Born and raised in Bosnia, Dr. Vajzovic fondly recalled her childhood spent visiting the slopes of Vlasic mountain, where she honed her skiing skills and even qualified for the junior Olympics. Growing up in a large family, she observed her aunt, a rheumatologist, balancing care for both family and patients. However, the outbreak of war in Bosnia altered the trajectory of her life. Amidst the conflict, she engaged in humanitarian efforts to provide supplies to those in need, particularly the elderly confined to their homes. These experiences would later fuel her passion for a career in medicine.
As a teenager, Dr. Vajzovic left her home country to join her brother in the United States as a refugee, arriving on her 16th birthday. Transitioning to life in a small town in Missouri with her American host family, Dr. Vajzovic encountered what she described as a “culture shock.” Nevertheless, she persevered with the incredible support of her brother and American family, graduating summa cum laude from the honors college at the University of Missouri with a fully funded scholarship to Mayo Clinic School of Medicine. Dr. Vajzovic attributes much of her success to ceaseless support from her parents, who supported her from afar while still living in Bosnia.
Ophthalmologist Dr. Amir Kahn at Mayo Clinic was one of her early mentors and inspired her to join Dr. Jonathan Holmes lab studying retinopathy of prematurity, in which her responsibilities included painstaking dissection of rat eyes to create retinal mounts. She excelled at the microsurgery and signaling her aptitude for a surgical subspecialty. After medical school, she completed an ocular pathology fellowship at Bascom Palmer, followed by her residency training, also at Bascom, and vitreoretinal surgery fellowship at Duke. At Duke, Dr. Cynthia Toth was an early mentor and inspiration, propelling her toward pediatric retina.
The session also featured a video compilation of heartfelt messages from twenty of Dr. Vajzovic’s former trainees, lauding her as a talented surgeon, patient mentor, and loving mother. Dr. Vajzovic expressed her passion for learning new surgical techniques and nurturing the next generation of vitreoretinal surgeons, remarking, “I am excited by new advancements…it keeps [surgery] entertaining.”
Dr. Vajzovic concluded her interview by imparting the following wisdom: “There’s really no balance…there are just priorities.” Dr. Vajzovic has made her priorities emphatically clear: her family, her work, her mentees, her patients. Nowhere was this more obvious than when her daughters concluded the videos emphasizing that Dr. Vajzovic, “works really hard but is still able to find time to spend with me and my sister… we love her a lot.”
Photos courtesy of Kevin Caldwell