Social Media’s Leading Physician Voice, KevinMD.com, Brings Attention to Cancer-Related Neuropathies
August 16, 2012

Social media’s leading physician voice, KevinMD.com, recently published a guest blog post, Helping Cancer Survivors Fight Neuropathy.

This guest blog post—written by Cindy Tofthagen, PhD, ARNP, a member of The Neuropathy Association's Neuropathic Pain Management Medical Advisory Council—offers insight into neuropathy as an underappreciated health issue impacting cancer survivors. 

Neuropathy—a common long-term health effect impacting a third of cancer survivors—can result from the tumor compressing on and/or infiltrating the peripheral nerves as well as from the cancer therapies (surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation). For this segment of our community, neuropathy and neuropathic pain is the “price of survival” that severely compromises quality of life and daily function.  

Cindy Tofthagen, PhD, ARNP is an assistant professor of nursing at the University of South Florida in Tampa and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Massachusetts and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She has twenty years of experience as a nurse specializing in cancer treatment. Her research interests include symptom management, chemotherapy-induced neuropathy, psychological aspects of cancer, and survivorship issues. Dr. Tofthagen also leads a Neuropathy Association support group in Tampa, Florida, helping people with neuropathy and their family and friends better understand the disease and find support.

We applaud the www.kevinmd.com team for bringing attention to this important health issue and we encourage them to continue to highlight and address the toll neuropathy—and neuropathic pain—takes on more than 20,000,000 Americans suffering.