Ryan S Sultan, MD

Dr. Sultan is a pediatric and adult psychiatrist. in his reseracher, he examines safety and effectiveness of psychotherapy and medication intervetions for adults and youth with ADHD, anxiety, and depression. He has an unusual background of full clinical training in both pediatric and adult psychiatry, computer programing, and research using epidemiologic methods in large dataset analysis.

Current Projects:

Applying Statistical Natural Language Processing of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) to Improve Pharmacologic Management of ADHD: Dr. Sultan's current project aims to integrate pediatric psychiatry, programing, and research with Natural Language Processing (NLP), to identify key factor governing community treatment decision making in ADHD. Understanding these factors will aid in public health initiative that move shift towards evidence based treatment and move field towards personalized medicine by understanding best provider fits for youth with ADHD.

Past Projects:

Treatment Patterns and Outcomes for Youth: Using epidemiologic methods and administrative datasets, Dr. Sultan described pharmacologic treatment patterns of youth, high risk outcomes in ADHD youth and antipsychotic and stimulant treatment patterns of youth with ADHD. This research advanced the field by identifying population level trends in rates of prescribing of antipsychotics in ADHD youth, demonstrating links to comorbidity and identifying potential problematic prescribing. Further, this research has demonstrated that the age and sex distribution of stimulant and antidepressant use among young people is broadly consistent with known national epidemiologic patterns of their established indications for ADHD, anxiety, and depression. Lastly, in studying adverse behaviors in youth with ADHD, Dr. Sultan identified early clinical antecedents of future problematic behaviors in this population. Specifically, adolescents with ADHD have elevated risks for suicide behaviors, aggression, emotional dysregulation and legal issues.

Psychopharmacology Safety, Prescribing, and Nomenclature: Through research on rates of neutropenia and agranulocytosis for clozapine treated individuals, Dr. Sultan identified that new FDA monitoring guidelines are likely to substantially reduce the percentage of patients who meet criteria for clozapine-associated hematologic events requiring treatment interruption. This decrease may reduce the clinical burden of managing patients who can be safety treated with clozapine and therefore increase the number of individuals treated with this uniquely effective medication. Further, to combat misrepresentations of psychotropic medications, Dr. Sultan worked to advance our nomenclature through a more neuroscience-based model.