The Penn Bone Center

Bone health is complex and can be affected by many factors, including chronic conditions, nutrition, and lifestyle. The Penn Bone Center brings together experts from multiple specialties who have training in every aspect of bone health. As part of the division of endocrinology, our center’s bone specialists coordinate with radiologists, geneticists, physical therapists, surgeons, and other experts to evaluate your bones and provide effective treatments.

In addition to exceptional clinical care, our center conducts research to advance our understanding of bone disorders, including performing clinical trials for rare bone diseases. We focus on quality improvement, disease screening and management, new therapies, and more, to continually enhance bone care.

When you come to the Penn Bone Center, we can:

• Use the most advanced diagnostic tools to screen for low bone density and give you an accurate and precise diagnosis
• Create a care plan to improve your bone density if you have osteopenia or osteoporosis
• Work with you to reduce your chances of a fracture, including if you’re an athlete at risk of stress fractures
• Help you manage parathyroid and calcium disorders, like hyperparathyroidism 
• Treat rare or complex bone diseases, including fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), tumor-induced osteomalacia, hypophosphatasia, X-linked hypophosphatemia, and others
• Provide care for conditions that affect your bone health, like thalassemia and Turner’s Syndrome

An important part of protecting your bones is to detect bone loss before a fracture happens. Our providers use bone density scans, called dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA), at most of our radiology locations. We may use advanced, FDA-approved software to give you a trabecular bone score (TBS), which can evaluate the risk of a bone fracture in postmenopausal women and older men. TBS can be used with another tool called a Fracture Risk Assessment Tool (FRAX) to provide a 10-year probability of bone fracture risk. In complex cases of osteoporosis, fragility fractures, and metabolic bone disease, we may perform a metabolic bone biopsy to find the cause of low bone density.

Full spectrum, collaborative bone care

Key members of your care team include pharmacists and physical therapists who specialize in bone health. The Penn Bone Center’s dedicated pharmacists work with your providers to ensure you have access to effective medications, including highly specialized and investigational therapies. Physical therapists teach you targeted exercises that can strengthen your bones and improve your balance, reducing your risk of falls and fractures. If you have a bone condition that causes pain or affects your mobility, your therapist can give you techniques that reduce your symptoms. Your exercises are tailored to your needs so that they’re safe and help you meet your goals.

Focused bone care for athletes

We partner with Penn Medicine’s Center for the Female Athlete—the only program of its kind in our region that offers female-specific sports medicine care. Athletes place continuous load on their bones, which may make them prone to tiny cracks, called stress fractures. If fractures occur, our team can work with your sports medicine physicians to screen for low bone density and provide personalized treatment to optimize your bone health for fracture healing and return to activity.