The Canadian Fibromyalgia Guidelines Committee (CFGC)

Description: The Canadian Fibromyalgia Guidelines Committee (CFGC) is a multidisciplinary team representing healthcare professionals from relevant fields managing FM patients, a patient representative, an external international expert, and a research coordinator. All CFGC members are listed as authors, had access to all data, participated in the data compilation, analysis, and writing of this report. Please note that each recommendation in the guideline was approved by a larger voting body of experts from across Canada. Below are short biographies for most members of the CFGC.

ONTARIO

Susan Abbey, Gordon Ko, Dwight Moulin

QUEBEC

Mary-Ann Fitzcharles, Peter Ste-Marie, Manon Choinière, Pantelis Panopalis, Johanne Proulx, Yoram Shir

WESTERN CANADA

John Xavier Pereira

EXTERNAL EXPERT (USA)

Don L. Goldenberg

Mary-Ann Fitzcharles (Committee Chair) is a clinical rheumatologist at McGill University, with medical training at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and the London Hospital, England. She was the guest editor for the Rheumatic Disease Clinics of North America (May, 2008) devoted to Pain Management and is currently: Co-Chair American College of Rheumatology Pain and Fibromyalgia 2012 abstract committee; American College of Rheumatology committee for updated criteria for fibromyalgia; Royal College of Physicians of Canada specialty core committee for Pain Medicine.

Peter Ste-Marie has been working at the Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit of the McGill University Health Centre for the past three years. He has a recently completed Law degree (LL.B.) from the University of Montreal and also has B.A. in Communications (journalism) from the University of Quebec in Montreal.

John Xavier Pereira is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Calgary. He works full-time in the field of pain management at the Calgary Chronic Pain Centre, the largest facility of its kind in Canada. He is also a Master Teacher at the Faculty of Medicine and received teaching awards from the medical school classes of 2012, 2013 and 2014. Dr. Pereira is a past Ronald Melzack Fellow of the McGill Pain Center and past Pfizer Canada Scholar in Persistent and Neuropathic Pain. His research interests include the effect of diet on pain and the optimal treatment of fibromyalgia. He has coauthored book chapters and presented at national and international conferences, most recently in Sydney, Australia. Disclosures: Dr. John Xavier Pereira has received research support from Pfizer Canada for the study of diet on pain and specifically the impact of omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oil. To the best of his knowledge, Pfizer Canada has no commercial financial interest in the consumption of fish oil or fish products. Furthermore, Dr. Pereira has never conducted a clinical research trial on any Pfizer product. Additionally, he has spoken at educational events sponsored by Paladin, Pfizer and Valeant Pharmaceuticals but has never accepted speaking fees from any drug company.

Susan Abbey is a psychiatrist with particular interests in the emotional aspects of physical illness, psychiatric aspects of high technology medical interventions, and the physical and emotional impact of stress. She is the Division Head, Medical Psychiatry and Psychosocial Oncology at University Health Network. Dr. Abbey is a Professor in Psychiatry at the University of Toronto.

Gordon D. Ko is Medical Director, Interventional Physiatry clinics and Assistant Professor at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto and the Canadian Centre for Integrative Medicine (Markham). His expertise on integrating conventional medical with complementary emerging therapies (such as Platelet-rich Plasma (PRP), Botox injections and Functional Medicine) was featured on CTV national news. He has published extensively and given several hundred talks including those on Fibromyalgia to professional and public groups. www.DrKoPRP.com

Dwight Moulin is an MD graduate of the University of Western Ontario where he also did his Neurology training. After a two-year Pain Fellowship at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York City, he returned to London, Ontario and joined the Faculty of Medicine where he is currently Professor in the Department of Clinical Neurological Sciences and Oncology and the Earl Russell Chair of Pain Medicine. His early work focused on the prevalence of chronic pain in multiple sclerosis and Guillain-Barre syndrome: two neurological conditions where pain was not well-recognized. He then went on to lead the first randomized, controlled trial of a major opioid in the management of chronic non-cancer pain and was a contributor to a study of controlled-release oxycodone in painful diabetic neuropathy. His more recent work has focused on the prevalence, treatment and impact of opioids in chronic pain in Canada and the use of methadone in neuropathic pain. He has chaired the Neuropathic Pain Special Interest Group of the Canadian Pain Society since 2005 and led the Consensus Statement on the Pharmacological Management of Chronic Neuropathic Pain. In May 2012, he was the recipient of the Distinguished Career Award from the Canadian Pain Society.

1 Division of Rheumatology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
2Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit, McGill University Health Center, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
3Faculty of Law, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
4Division of Rheumatology, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
5Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
6Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
7Centre de la recherche du Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal; Department of Anesthesiology, Faculty of Medicine, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
8Division of Physiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
9Departments of Clinical Neurological Sciences and Oncology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
10Patient representative