What are the causes of knee pain?

I see a lot of different people with different age ranges for knee pain. Predominantly I see older people; people being usually over 40 or so that have knee pain related to osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is wearing of the cartilage from the tips of the bone, the femur articulates with the tibia so the thigh bone articulates with the shin bone.  And on the ends of the bones is cartilage. Once the smooth cartilage starts wearing off that exposes the bone underneath. Unfortunately the bone underneath has nerves in it and the nerves can then start becoming stimulated and cause knee pain.

We also see people with knee pain related to meniscus pathology. People over 40 start getting degenerative meniscus tears which occur often times even without trauma. It’s pain – usually on one side of the joint more typically medially or on the inside of the joint but sometimes on the lateral side. Meniscus tears can cause pain at night similar to osteoarthritis but it seems to be more localized than osteoarthritis.