Expanding Radiation Oncology into Benign Disease: Translating Evidence to Modern International Practice
Description
Osteoarthritis (OA) affects nearly one in four adults worldwide and has become an escalating public health concern. Medical and surgical interventions often carry notable morbidity, cost, and side effects. As a noninvasive alternative, low-dose radiotherapy (LDRT) has demonstrated pain relief and functional improvement in recent European studies. The growing evidence has catalyzed renewed interest across North America, with many clinics now offering or actively exploring LDRT for OA. Compared with cancerous lesions, benign disease targets are less familiar to radiation oncology departments, reflecting differences in diagnosis, anatomy, and treatment characteristic. OA treatments often involve irregular, highly mobile joints, where each case presents distinctive challenges in patient immobilization and setup reproducibility. Treatment field design also requires site-specific considerations that may be unfamiliar to clinics new to LDRT-OA. As radiation oncology expands into benign disease management, these factors - together with the associated resource demands - highlight the need for standardized and efficient workflows to facilitate safe and sustainable program implementation across the North American clinical landscape. This session outlines the essential clinical knowledge and technical skills required for radiation oncology teams to initiate low-dose radiation therapy for osteoarthritis. We review current OA management practices, address key clinical and technical challenges, present real clinical case examples across diverse treatment sites, and offer practical guidance on workflow design to support successful program implementation and future expansion.