Before Barbara Coates met radiation oncologist John Plastaras, MD, PhD, it was impossible for her to walk without excruciating pain. Within 24 hours of her first treatment session with him, she was moving better than she had in years and crying tears of joy.
The 58-year-old Montgomery County resident had severe osteoarthritis, a condition where the cartilage that cushions the ends of your bones wears down over time. Without enough cartilage, bones rub against each other, causing pain, stiffness, and swelling-for some patients, with every step.
Coates was one of the first patients at Penn Medicine to receive low-dose radiation therapy to treat her osteoarthritis. While radiation therapy is most often used for cancer treatment, it's gaining traction as a tool for other non-cancerous conditions, and Penn Medicine physicians are leading the charge for implementing low-dose radiation therapy in a patient-centric fashion while advancing research on these approaches.
