Tochukwu (Tochi) Okwuosa, DO, is cardiologist and a professor of medicine at Rush University. Her internal medicine residency and subspecialty cardiology fellowship training were completed at the University of Chicago Medical Center and at Northwestern University in Chicago.
Okwuosa initiated and developed the cardio-oncology program (dealing with cardiovascular disease in cancer patients) at the Karmanos Cancer Center in Detroit and left shortly afterwards to develop and build the now successful cardio-oncology program at Rush University Medical Center. As director of cardio-oncology at Rush, she has since spearheaded a number of successful cardio-oncology initiatives, including the annual regional cardio-oncology symposium geared toward education of health care workers involved in the care of the cancer patient, developing student and trainee educational curriculum in cardio-oncology, establishing cardio-oncology research projects for interested students and trainees, and is in the process of organizing a monthly CME website content aimed at further educating health care workers nationally and internationally.
She emphasizes unparalleled patient care and house staff/community education in cardio-oncology and preventive cardiology and is also organizing a patient education seminar to increase awareness of cardiovascular diseases in cancer survivors and encourage patients to be proactive about cardiovascular care in survivorship years. Her clinical and research interests are in the field of cardio-oncology, where she is well published and is currently championing research projects that involve identification of risk for and prevention of chemotherapy and radiation-induced cardiomyopathy.
Okwuosa is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Piccolo-Gavers Translational Research Grant Award for evaluating markers of doxorubicin-induced cardiotoxicity. She has published many peer-reviewed research articles, book chapters, editorials and review articles in the field of cardiology, cardiovascular disease prevention and cardio-oncology, including in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and JAMA-Oncology. She sits on national cardio-oncology committees and writing groups with the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association and has been invited to give presentations and contribute on various topics in cardio-oncology. Okwuosa regularly reviews articles for many peer-reviewed journals, including Journal of the American Medical Association, and is passionately involved in community education.
