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

Background ObjectiveA systematised review compared validity and reliability of the Beighton Score to those of other commonly used scores for identification of generalised joint hypermobility (GJH) MethodsInclusion 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. The final review included 73 papers. The PRISMA (2021) COSMIN (2010) guidelines and CASP (2019) criteria were used to evaluate methodological quality and bias. ResultsThe Beighton Scores 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 an issue in study methodology, not previously identified in the literature. ConclusionPaucity 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. This review was not registered.