Anterior Knee Pain in both knees

Hello,

I'm a 21 year old male and had anterior knee pain in both knees for the last 10 months or so. The pain is from the top of the kneecap to an inch or so up the leg and occurs when I do a squat or any movement where weight is put on the knee and then straightened. It feels like it is coming from the area of the tendon.

When it first started I used to get pain going up and down stairs but it has got better to a point where I don't have any pain doing this any more.

The area of isn't localised to a point and isn't at all tender to touch. Below my kneecap is quite tender to touch though strangely as I don't get any pain there.

Before the injury I was very active - playing football several times a week. It all started when over the summer month I started taking up jogging. About a month after I started (several times a week) the pain appeared in both knees, so I stopped running completely straight away and haven't done since. At the time I was spending a lot of time onthe computer with my knee bent also, but I now try to keep my knee straighter when working.

I did continue playing the occasional football game for a while but haven't done any sport for a few months now and no improvement. When I play football the pain gets better throughout the game and stays better for the rest of the day usually only to return slightly worse in the morning.

The things I've tried include stretching everyday the hamstring,quads, calf, IT band etc (which I've stopped recently), strengthening my VMO several times a day for a month - the pain did improve to start with and then seemed to get worse again and some strengthening to my external hip rotators but no change. I also tried a course of ibuprofen for 2 weeks but no difference, as well as icing everyday for 2 weeks - again no difference.

I have been to a podiatrist who gave me some orthotics for my over pronation. I think they helped a bit but not much. I have been back to see him to check they are working correctly and they are. I've also seen a knee surgeon who after doing a bone scan said he wanted to do an arthroscopy to see if he could find anything but I have declined for now.

I've seen a physio but he said he didn't know what it was and there was nothing he could do - I'm thinking of getting another opinion but wanted to see if anyone had any other advice here first. I've also been seeing a sports massage therapist - deep massage on the area seems to really help for the rest of the day but the pain is back in the morning.

It's getting very frustrating as it's stopped all the sports I love to play, and I feel I'm getting progressively unfitter! I do a bit of swimming which doesn't seem to make the pain worse but I can't get to the pool as often as I'd like.

Does anyone have any ideas on what could be causing this and what I could do about it? The pain does seem to get a bit better sometimes then get worse again without me knowingly changing anything, but it is always there. Sorry for the long post but I wanted to give as much information as possible.

Thanks