A Systematised Review of the Beighton Score Compared with Other Commonly Used Measurement Tools for Assessment and Identification of Generalised Joint Hypermobility (GJH)

Abstract

This systematic review compares the validity and reliability of the Beighton Score to those of other commonly used scores for identifying generalised joint hypermobility (GJH). Inclusion criteria: English language, studies on humans, all types of study designs, publications in academic journals, publications from the year two thousand onwards, publications in print and theses. Exclusion criteria: studies not in English, studies measuring single joints only, studies published before the year 2000, cadaveric studies, papers with only abstracts available. An electronic literature search was undertaken of Pub Med/MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, Cochrane Database, SPORT Discus, Pedro databases, followed by a manual search between August and November 2021. The final review included 73 papers. The PRISMA (2021) COSMIN (2010) guidelines and CASP (2019) criteria were used to evaluate methodological quality and bias. The Beighton Score’s intra-rater and inter-rater reliability ranged between ICC 0.74-0.99 and ICC 0.72-0.98 respectively. The BS has reasonable intra-rater and inter-rater reliability, however validity cannot be accurately determined as incorporation bias was identified as a major issue in study methodology, not previously identified in the literature. Paucity of data prevented accurate assessment of other scoring systems. Urgent research is required to clarify these issues and compare the BS to other tests. No source of funding was received in in undertaking this review. The author has no conflict of interests to disclose. This review was not registered. This review has been conducted as closely as possible in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines for reporting systematic reviews.