Shriners Children’s Doctor Colleen Ryan Breaks New Ground in Burn Care

This article is part of an ongoing series spotlighting the innovative research of providers throughout the Shriners Children's system. Read another here.

Often, when a doctor dedicates more than 35 years of their career to studying and personally treating a particular condition, they have a personal tie to it, something that drives them day in and day out. Perhaps a family member was impacted by it, or they themselves were. Or maybe it’s a concern to their local community or region of the country.

But that isn’t quite the case with renowned burn surgeon and researcher Colleen Ryan, M.D. The Doylestown, Pennsylvania, native was a resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and conducted her burn rotation at Massachusetts General Hospital when she discovered her affinity for the field.

“I just liked the field since the beginning,” she said. “There is so much you can do for the patients and their families at a time in their life where it is desperately needed.” Not only that, but she also found burn care intellectually and scientifically fascinating. “One medical student likened the burn care field to the space program, because solving the burn problems has often led to technology that is applicable to many other areas of medicine.”

She clearly took those words to heart. Since retiring from surgery in 2010 after about 20 years of operating on burn patients at Shriners Children’s Boston, she still actively sees patients in the clinic. In addition, her large, internationally renowned research laboratory allows Dr. Ryan, who is also a professor at Harvard Medical School, to study long-term outcomes in burn patients, and she hopes to better define the long-term needs of children living with burn injuries and improve the pathway to recovery.

“When I first started treating burn patients, the only important outcome was surviving to discharge,” she said. “As I have grown older with my patients, I see that they encounter difficulties related to their injury and their scars. Their health needs had not yet been described. After publishing landmark papers in mortality, I began to focus on long-term quality of life. That is one reason I work in this area of the field.”