Patients will be asked to continue for 12 weeks of nonoperative medical management without physical therapy. At 12 weeks they will be reevaluated regarding the need for total knee arthroplasty.

Patients will be provided a prescription for 12 weeks of physical therapy at a location of their choice. No set protocol will be issued to allow for adjustments based on patient activity level and the therapist's professional choice. The physical therapy techniques, consisting of active and passive physiological and accessory movements and soft tissue mobilization, active range of motion exercises, muscle strengthening, muscle stretching, and exercises such as riding a stationary bicycle will be applied at the discretion of the treating physical therapist primarily to the knee and surrounding structures.

12 weeks of supervised physical therapy.

Following Physical Therapy or observation, the patients (who are indicated for total knee replacement) will be asked if they desire a surgical intervention or if they would like to continue nonoperative management.

The PROMIS score incorporates questions from multiple validated instruments of functional outcome. The system was then calibrated to the normal population distribution and has been applied previously to assess lower extremity dysfunction. This will increase our sensitivity in detecting differences between the two groups. The CAT is an adaptive test that responds to previous patient responses to decrease the amount of questions required to obtain a score. This will allow our CAT to last 1-5 minutes as opposed to a longer patient reported score or system. PROMIS has also been utilized in the setting of arthritis and should allow for a greater detection of functional improvement.