"I think proton therapy is an amazing form of treatment that is ideal for patients with certain cancers."

Teresa Oldham, MD

Position:

Radiation Oncologist

Specialty:

Prostate Cancer

As a radiation oncology resident, Dr. Teresa Oldham did not expect to end up practicing medicine in Indiana or to be treating her cancer patients exclusively with proton therapy.

“As residents, we learned about the physics of proton therapy but because the treatment was not widely available, it was not a large part of our curriculum,” says Dr. Oldham.

At the time – just earlier this decade – there were just two proton therapy centers in the United States – one in Boston at Massachusetts General Hospital and the other across the country in Loma Linda, California.

“Since proton therapy was only available at a handful of sites across the country, we thought of it as a treatment for unusual cases,” she says.

Proton therapy is especially beneficial for patients with specific cancers, including less common malignancies in the head, neck and brain. Because the proton beam can be contoured and programmed to stop at cancer cells – instead of traveling beyond them, as X-rays do – proton therapy is able to destroy cancer cells while sparing important organs and healthy tissue just a millimeter away.

“Proton therapy is an amazing form of treatment that is ideal for patients with certain cancers,” explains Dr. Oldham.

Proton therapy is also a highly advantageous form of radiation for a more common form of cancer – prostate cancer. In fact, for the past four years, Dr. Oldham has been using proton therapy to treat patients with prostate cancer at the IU Health Proton Therapy Center, which is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among men, affecting one of every six men throughout their lifetime.

“My prostate cancer patients have all done very well with proton therapy, with minimal side effects,” says Dr. Oldham. More and more men diagnosed with the disease are choosing the precision targeting ability of proton therapy because it minimizes the side effects that accompany other treatment options, such as incontinence and rectal complications.

“When I first started working with patients, most had learned about proton therapy through their own research,” she says. “But more and more, patients are hearing about proton therapy by word-of-mouth and former IU Health Proton Therapy Center patients.”

As for life in Southern Indiana, where the IU Health Proton Therapy Center is located, Dr. Oldham says her transition to Bloomington from Arkansas where she was born and raised was an easy one.

“I love living in Bloomington, and it a comfortable and welcoming community,” she says. “My colleagues at the IU Health Proton Therapy Center are highly knowledgeable and extremely enjoyable people.”

STATS

• BS, zoology, Arkansas State University
• MD, University of Tennessee Center for the Health Sciences, College of Medicine, Memphis
• Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology, Indiana University School of Medicine
• Board certified in radiation oncology
• Previous appointments at the North Florida Radiation Oncology Associates, Tallahassee Memorial Hospital