As a specialist in rheumatology, Dr. Mody is very excited about the innovative treatments she can offer her patients. “In many ways, it’s like the golden age of rheumatology. It used to be that you could tell a patient had rheumatoid arthritis even when they were sitting in the waiting room – it was that noticeable. Nowadays, you really can’t tell because people do so well with the disease when they have proper treatment.”

Dr. Mody treats all forms of arthritis at Reliant. She also does joint aspirations ad injections (including injecting and draining bursa). Dr. Mody is a big believer in exercise as therapy. “At every appointment I want to discuss exercise and what patients are doing. Are they doing core strengthening, quadriceps strengthening, and balance training? Exercise is very much a part of treatment in arthritis.”

In her practice Dr. Mody has a particular interest in treating psoriatric arthritis (a disease that affects the joints of patients with psoriasis). “It’s an interesting time in the treatment of psoriatric arthritis. There are a lot of new medications that have been developed and for the first time we are really looking at psoriatric arthritis as its own entity. The targeted biologic therapies have really made a difference in helping patients with this disease.”

Dr. Mody admits that it can take some time to make a proper diagnosis when dealing with all the different forms of arthritis. “Sometimes patients have pain and they don’t know why. I don’t like to use medication necessarily just to treat symptoms. However, I think it’s very important that the patient is treated enough so that they can exercise. That’s often where I draw the line. Everything is a risk/benefit analysis. You don’t want to undertreat, but you don’t want to over-treat either because medications do have side effects.”

Dr. Mody says the part of her work that she enjoys most is helping her patients each day. “I have patients that I have been seeing for over 20 years. I know all about their kids, they know all about mine. Seeing patients is really where I get my energy from.”

When she is not busy seeing patients, Dr. Mody likes to go biking with her husband. She also enjoys knitting as well as cooking, especially Indian and Thai food.