Knee Pain Is the Malady—Not Osteoarthritis

Excerpt

Osteoarthritis is a well-defined pathoanatomic entity readily demonstrable by modern imaging techniques. For a century, the pathology that is this disease has been ingrained in the mind of every medical student: inexorable progression from subtle biochemical alterations in articular cartilage through cartilage loss and reactive bone formation to the end-stage of eburnated bone and exuberant osteophytosis. We all shudder at the image of the patient suffering with end-stage osteoarthritis, bedeviled by a deformed, unstable, incapacitating, and painful knee. What physician can listen to the complaint of knee pain without conjuring up the image of such an outcome? What physician can