The Department of Radiation Oncology at the Indiana University School of Medicine is officially going by a new name: Department of Radiation Medicine. The change reflects the broader scope of medical conditions now treated through radiation therapy.
“We’re doing significantly more than just oncology,” said department Chair Rich Zellars, MD.
For decades, the field has focused on treating cancer, but recent studies show low-dose radiation can safely be used for reducing pain and inflammation, particularly in joints.
“The new area we are really embracing is what we call functional radiation therapy, which is to return function to key parts of the body,” Zellars said. “The biggest area right now is osteoarthritis — treating knees, elbows, shoulders, with a very, very low dose of radiation that is incredibly safe.”
Arpan Prabhu, MD, launched IU’s osteoarthritis program last fall. He came to IU in 2023 as a specialist in treating cancers of the digestive and urinary systems, but he had grown increasingly interested in the use of low-dose radiation therapy, or LDRT, for arthritis.
“There was a paper published in one of our seminal radiation oncology journals a few years back,” said Prabhu. “And it’s very common in Europe. They have been doing it for decades. Germany treats about 15,000 people a year for non-cancerous conditions with radiation therapy.”
In 2025, a landmark multi-center clinical trail from South Korea was presented at the American Society for Radiation Oncology annual meeting. It showed that 70% of patients with osteoarthritis of the knee experienced significant pain reduction and mobility improvement with no radiation-related side effects from LDRT.
The recent studies combined with Europe’s longstanding use of low-dose radiation have led to a resurgence in the United States.
“It’s a very low-dose and a very safe intervention that’s in the toolbelt for arthritis pain,” said Prabhu. “It’s a good alternative to delay or potentially avoid surgery.”
With Zellars’ support and approval from the institutional review board, Prabhu launched his own clinical trial at IU.
“We’re keeping track of the outcomes data for all the patients that we’re treating, to monitor their quality of life and their pain scores after treatment, so we can publish data on how well this treatment is helping Indiana patients,” said Prabhu, who is a researcher with the Indiana Center for Musculoskeletal Health at IU School of Medicine.
In addition to arthritis, radiation can be used to treat several other non-cancerous conditions. For example, it can help lower the chance of thick, raised scars called keloids from returning after removal, and it can prevent a condition called heterotopic ossification — when extra bone forms in places it shouldn’t, such as around joints after surgeries like hip replacement, leading to pain and stiffness.
Another potential application is cardiac radiation.
“Treating very defined areas of the heart may help people who have arrhythmias due to electrical malfunctions in the heart,” Zellars said. “We’re going to be doing a study later this year with cardiology.”
To better reflect these broader applications for radiation therapy, IU joins several other academic health centers across the nation that are changing the names of their Radiation Oncology departments.
“We thought it was appropriate to have a name that better reflected what we actually do,” Zellars said. “We’re not just treating cancer.”
Another benefit to the name change comes from the patient perspective.
“Patients don’t like to hear the word ‘oncology’ or walk into a building with ‘oncology’ on it,” said Zellars, especially if they’re going there to be treated for arthritis of the knee.
Cancer is what brought Zellars, Prabhu and most of their colleagues to the field of radiation medicine, but they are eager to see what other maladies their specialty can treat or cure.
“We love taking care of patients with cancer and helping them through their journey,” said Prabhu. “But nowadays, a lot of patients in our waiting rooms aren’t patients with cancer. They’re patients with other conditions affecting their quality of life and causing them pain.”
It’s an exciting time as the field of radiation medicine evolves and advances.
“I think we’re just at the beginning of exploring the different conditions that radiation can be used for,” said Prabhu. “We have a really good team here of physicians and researchers that are interested in pushing the field forward.”
