Fiona Wood
Director of the Burns Service of Western Australia (BSWA); Consultant Plastic Surgeon; Co-Head, Perioperative Care Research Program; Team Leader, Paediatric Burn Care
Fiona Wood has been a burns surgeon and researcher for over 30 years and is Director of the Burns Service of Western Australia (BSWA). She is a Consultant Plastic Surgeon at Fiona Stanley Hospital and Perth Children's Hospital; co-founder of the first skin cell laboratory in WA; Winthrop Professor in the School of Surgery at The University of Western Australia; and co-founder of the Fiona Wood Foundation (formerly The McComb Foundation).
Professor Wood leads the Paediatric Burn Care team at The Kids Research Institute Australia and is Co-Head of the Perioperative Care Research Program, alongside Professor Britta Regli-von Ungern-Sternberg.
Professor Wood’s greatest contribution and enduring legacy is her work with co-inventor Marie Stoner, pioneering the innovative ‘spray-on skin’ technique (Recell), where today the technique is used worldwide. In October 2002, Fiona was propelled into the media spotlight when the largest proportion of survivors from the 2002 Bali bombings arrived in Perth where Fiona led the medical team at Royal Perth Hospital to save many lives.
Fiona was named a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2003. In 2004 she was awarded the Western Australia Citizen of the Year award for her contribution to Medicine in the field of burns research. Fiona was then named Australian of the Year for 2005. She is an Australian Living Treasure. Fiona is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Science.
Awards/Honours
- 2003 - Named a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).
- 2003-2004 - Won the Western Australia Citizen of the Year award for her contribution to Medicine in the field of burns research.
- 2005 - Professor Wood and Marie Stoner won the Clunies Ross Award (Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering) for their contribution to medical science in Australia.
- 2005-2010 - Voted Australia’s Most Trusted Person for six successive years in a Reader's Digest poll. Has been recognised as an ‘Australian Living Treasure’.
Projects
Wellbeing study
Burns are a common cause of emergency presentations, and most burn injuries happen to children and adolescents.
November 2020
Published research
Stratification of Sepsis Patients on Admission into the Intensive Care Unit According to Differential Plasma Metabolic Phenotypes
Delayed diagnosis of patients with sepsis or septic shock is associated with increased mortality and morbidity. UPLC-MS and NMR spectroscopy were used to measure panels of lipoproteins, lipids, biogenic amines, amino acids, and tryptophan pathway metabolites in blood plasma samples collected from 152 patients within 48 h of admission into the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where 62 patients had no sepsis, 71 patients had sepsis, and 19 patients had septic shock.
Non-severe thermal burn injuries induce long-lasting downregulation of gene expression in cortical excitatory neurons and microglia
Burn injuries are devastating traumas, often leading to life-long consequences that extend beyond the observable burn scar. In the context of the nervous system, burn injury patients commonly develop chronic neurological disorders and have been suggested to have impaired motor cortex function, but the long-lasting impact on neurons and glia in the brain is unknown.