The treatment has to be conservative in early stages of the disease by the following methods:

• Rest, antiinflamatorios and weight loss.
• Brace and local cold.
• Physiotherapy.
• Joint infiltrations with steroid antiinflammatories or hyaluronic acid.
• Arthroscopy with joint lavage (depending on the degree of cartilage degeneration).

In case the conservative treatment does not achieve an obvious improvement and pain affects the quality of life of the patient, surgeon should consider whether the surgical option could be only a compartmental arthroplasty (medial or lateral unicompartmental prosthesis) or total joint replacement (total prosthesis).