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By Mayo Clinic staffSlick cartilage allows the ends of the bones in a healthy knee to move smoothly against each other. In osteoarthritis, this cartilage is damaged and worn away.
For some people, this damage is worse on one side of the knee than the other. This can cause your knee to bow inward or outward. Removing or adding a wedge of bone in your shinbone or thighbone can help straighten out this bowing and shift your weight to the undamaged part of your knee joint.
Knee osteotomy is also sometimes used to repair misalignments in the knee joint caused by traumatic injuries or birth defects.
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- Spangehl MJ (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. June 16, 2009.
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