A Conversation With ... Brendon Delport

I’ve been in practice as an ophthalmologist in Springfield for almost two years. Before that, I finished training in Detroit and took about six months off. Initially, I was going to have my own building and start my own practice – the whole nine yards – before I joined Doctors Hospital. I’m technically an employee with Doctors Hospital for insurance reasons … but I have no restrictions in contract. I can open up shop wherever I need to or want to. Doctors Hospital provides a lot of the overhead … for me. I have three people full-time and share the overhead with the front-office staff and billing. I work at Doctors Hospital in Nixa on Wednesdays. I’m in the operating room typically on Fridays, and in my Springfield office Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

How did you choose ophthalmology as the focus of your medical practice?

I never wanted to do any specialty. I wanted to do primary care – family medicine – and I have no extended family members who are physicians to give me any idea of what to expect. I went through medical school … and hit the clinical rotation and found that my whole “Marcus Welby” mindset – the doctor who does everything – he delivers babies, cares for adults and does surgery – that’s not family medicine nowadays. Family medicine is pretty focused, and I wasn’t thrilled with what I saw. I started looking for a specialty that would be of interest, and we had an ophthalmologist who came through medical school, and he was a neat guy. I spent some time with him and really got to like the field. I’ve always liked the eyeball in general. It’s always been a fascinating interest of mine, but I’d never really thought of making a career out of it. I do general ophthalmology such as routine eye exams and all that general ophthalmology entails, but I don’t do laser-related refractive surgeries.

You also provide ocular plastic and reconstructive surgery. What does that entail?

Ocular obviously refers to the eye … but it can be around the eye structure as well. We all know what plastic surgery is, so any sort of reconstruction or redistribution of tissues is ocular plastic surgery. It’s a subspecialty within ophthalmology … strictly an ophthalmologist who has additional training in plastic and reconstructive surgery around the eye. It’s a very focused specialty of the eyelid, the orbit, the brow – peri-orbital structures – basically midface and up. There are other general plastic surgery practices in town that do some of the same things that I do, but focused on ophthalmic and plastic surgery, there’s only me.

What are some of the most common problems you see among patients?

I’ve seen a lot of skin malignancies in this area. I’m really surprised. The last two years, I’ve probably seen more than I saw during four years in Detroit – eyelid malignancies, tumors that need refraction and reconstruction. That’s been a surprise to me. A lot of my population … I don’t see the younger crowd as much as I do the Medicare population … so a lot of my (patients) are older, with malpositioned lids, droopy lids, those issues that happen to come along with age. Droopy lids are probably the largest percentage of procedures that I do. There’s a difference between redundancy of skin and actual physical droop of the lid. That lid-droop is a muscle problem, either acquired during adulthood or you’re born that way.

Tell us about your background.

I was born and raised in South Africa, actually. We moved to Oklahoma City for the first five years we lived in the states, and we moved to Springfield shortly thereafter. From South Africa to Oklahoma City, of all places – talk about culture shock! I’ve been through junior high, high school and college here in Springfield and then left to do my training and then came back. My dad was a missionary kid, and his parents were also born there, so it’s multigenerational. I went to what used to be the University of Health Sciences in Kansas City, now called Kansas City University of Medical and Biosciences, and then did my residency and fellowship training at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

What do you enjoy in your free time?

I’m not married, and I don’t have any kids. A lot of my time is spent doing busywork for the practice, but I love listening to music. I draw, and I like doing sketches when I have time, and I read. If I had time to travel, I’d love to travel. I’ve got my open-water diving certification, but I haven’t used it much. I love to fly. I’m almost done getting my pilot’s license. I was working on it when I first came to town – that’s something that I’d like to be able to do.