The knee absorbs force with every step, squat, and stair — so pain here quickly limits daily life. Knee pain can come from arthritis, tendon and ligament injuries, cartilage (meniscus) damage, or tracking problems in the kneecap. Mountain View Pain Center treats knee pain non-surgically with coordinated Pain Management, Physical Therapy, Chiropractic care, and Acupuncture, helping many patients avoid or delay surgery.
Osteoarthritis is the most common cause of chronic knee pain in adults, as cartilage gradually wears and the joint becomes stiff and swollen. Patellofemoral pain syndrome ("runner's knee") causes pain around the kneecap with stairs, squatting, or sitting. Meniscus tears may follow twisting injuries or develop gradually with age. Tendinopathies of the patellar and quadriceps tendons follow overuse. Ligament sprains (MCL, ACL) follow sports and accident injuries. In adolescents, Osgood-Schlatter disease causes pain below the kneecap at the growth plate.
Aching or sharp pain with activity, stiffness after sitting or in the morning, swelling, clicking or grinding, instability or "giving way," and pain localized to the front, sides, or back of the knee depending on the structure involved.
We take a history focused on how the pain began and what aggravates it, then examine gait, alignment, range of motion, stability, and strength through the hip and ankle as well — mechanics above and below the knee often drive knee pain. Imaging is used when the exam suggests structural injury or when arthritis staging would change treatment.
Request Your Appointment — clinics across Colorado and Arizona, or call (720) 749-5599.
Often, no — and the evidence on this is unusually clear. For degenerative meniscus tears in middle age, rigorous randomised trials have found that structured exercise therapy matches arthroscopic surgery on pain and function. For knee osteoarthritis, guideline-recommended first-line care is exercise, load management and weight support, not the operating table.
That does not mean surgery is never right. A locked knee, a traumatic tear in a younger patient, or end-stage arthritis that has stopped responding to everything else are all genuine surgical conversations. What it means is that surgery should be the conclusion of a process, not the opening move.
The knee also takes a particular beating in Colorado and Arizona — hiking, skiing, pickleball and golf are hard on it in different ways, and the pattern of your pain usually tells us which activity is driving it. Our evaluation covers osteoarthritis, patellofemoral (kneecap) pain, meniscus problems, patellar and quadriceps tendinopathy, ligament sprains and post-injury instability, and referred pain from the hip or low back — because a knee that hurts without a clear knee finding is often not a knee problem at all.
Knee pain is unusually well localized, and asking a patient to point with one finger is one of the more informative things we do. Pain at the front, around or under the kneecap, that is worse on stairs, on hills, and after sitting with the knee bent for a long stretch, is the commonest presentation we see and usually concerns how the kneecap is tracking rather than damage inside the joint.
Pain along the inner joint line, especially with a history of a twist, points toward the medial meniscus or the ligament that runs down that side. Pain along the outside, particularly in runners and cyclists and worst at a specific point in the stride, more often involves the band of tissue running down the outer thigh than the joint itself.
Pain behind the knee, with a sense of fullness or tightness when you straighten fully, is often a fluid-filled swelling that has formed in response to something else going on inside the joint — which means the useful question is what the knee is reacting to, not the swelling itself.
Four descriptions matter more than a pain score. Giving way — the knee buckling without warning — can mean instability from a ligament, or it can mean the thigh muscle switching off because the joint is irritated. Those are different problems and the examination separates them.
Catching or locking, where the knee sticks and has to be worked free, suggests something mechanical inside the joint interrupting the movement. Grinding and crunching under the kneecap sounds worse than it usually is and, on its own, is common in knees that work perfectly well.
Swelling is the detail people most often forget to mention and the one with the clearest timeline value. Swelling within an hour or two of an injury suggests bleeding into the joint and needs prompt assessment. Swelling that comes up overnight, or that appears after activity and settles with rest, tells a slower, more mechanical story.
Plenty of knee pain resolves with a couple of quieter weeks and does not need us. The knees worth having looked at are the ones that have stopped following that curve — pain that is no better after a few weeks of sensible loading, pain that returns every time you go back to what you were doing, or a knee that has started to change how you walk.
That last one is the important one. A knee that is being protected quietly reorganizes everything around it: the thigh muscle wastes, the hip and ankle take up the slack, and the other leg starts doing more than its share. Those changes are a large part of why an old knee problem becomes a stubborn one, and they are treatable in their own right.
If a knee has been painful for months and you have adapted around it without noticing, the adaptation is usually as worth addressing as the original complaint.
A knee that is hot, red, markedly swollen and very painful, particularly alongside a fever, needs urgent medical assessment — a joint infection is treated as an emergency. So does a knee that is visibly deformed after an injury, or one you cannot bear any weight on at all.
Get seen promptly for a knee that swelled within a couple of hours of an injury, for a knee that has locked and will not straighten, and for calf pain, swelling or warmth in the leg below the knee, which needs to be assessed for a clot rather than assumed to be part of the knee problem.
Ordinary knee pain does none of these things, which is what makes the list useful.
No referral is needed for any of our service lines, and our goal is to get you in within the same week.
We take a history built around how it started and what provokes it, then examine the knee through range, stability and the meniscal tests — and examine the hip and ankle too, since mechanics above and below the knee frequently drive the pain in it. Strength through the thigh and glutes is measured rather than eyeballed, because that is what the rehabilitation plan is built on. Imaging is used when it would change the plan; degenerative changes appear on scans in a great many people with no symptoms, so a film is read next to the examination and not instead of it.
Bring a photo ID and your insurance card, any previous imaging, and if you can, the shoes you walk or run most in — wear patterns are genuinely informative. If a joint injection is appropriate, it is performed in office at every clinic. If another interventional step is appropriate, it is performed in office at Northglenn, north Colorado Springs, Mesa and Glendale, and every other clinic coordinates to one of those.
Keep loading the knee within a range that does not leave it sore the following morning. That next-morning check is a better guide than how it feels during the activity itself, and it lets you increase steadily without guessing.
Strength through the quadriceps and the glutes changes how a knee feels more reliably than anything else available at home. Sitting-to-standing from a chair, step-ups at a height you can control, and straight-leg raises are unglamorous and effective. A Physical Therapist will give you a short specific set rather than a long generic one.
Ice after activity if it is swollen; heat before activity if it is stiff. Avoid long stretches with the knee held bent — car journeys and cinema seats are frequent offenders — and get up and straighten it periodically.
Every Mountain View Pain Center clinic has Pain Management, Physical Therapy, Chiropractic care and Acupuncture in the same building — so if knee pain needs more than one kind of care, you do not get handed off to another practice.
Colorado: Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs, Lakewood, Littleton, Highlands Ranch, Lone Tree, Northglenn, Lafayette, Greeley, Fort Collins.
Arizona: Phoenix, Mesa, Chandler, Glendale, Peoria.
No referral is needed in either state. Find your nearest clinic on the full clinic map, or call Colorado (720) 749-5599 or Arizona (602) 325-2024.
Last updated: July 23, 2026.
Seek prompt care for a knee that is significantly swollen, unstable, can't bear weight, or locked. For most gradual-onset knee pain, evaluation is warranted when pain persists beyond a few weeks or limits activity.
Yes. Exercise therapy, weight management, activity modification, and injections control symptoms well for many patients. Surgery is typically considered when conservative care no longer maintains acceptable function.
Descending stairs loads the kneecap joint several times body weight, so patellofemoral problems and arthritis often show up there first. Strengthening the quadriceps and hips usually improves it.
No. Degenerative meniscus tears frequently do as well with structured Physical Therapy as with surgery. Acute tears causing locking, or tears in young athletes, are more often surgical.
Most patients can schedule directly without a referral. Some insurance plans require one for coverage — we verify your benefits before your first visit, so call (720) 749-5599 and we'll handle the details.
No. Bring any imaging you already have, but nothing is needed to be seen. Whether imaging is required is one of the things the examination decides.
Yes, and it often is. The hip and the low back both refer pain into the knee, which is why the examination looks above the knee as well as at it.
Physical Therapy aimed at the muscles controlling the knee, Chiropractic care where the hip and back are contributing, and a joint injection where the joint itself needs it. Joint and trigger point injections are performed in office at every clinic.
The same care, written for the metro you are in: knee pain treatment in Denver, knee pain treatment in Colorado Springs, or knee pain treatment in Phoenix.
Each page names the clinics in that metro, what the first visit involves, and where an interventional step would be performed if one is needed.
Knee Pain is treated at every Mountain View Pain Center clinic in Colorado and Arizona — see the full clinic map, Colorado or Arizona.
