Beighton Scoring System
What It Measures
The Beighton Scoring system a physical assessment of 9 joint movements followed by historical questions questions about a persons movement ability that is used to assess for hyper mobility syndromes. This assessment measures range of motion in 5 joints: the knuckle of both pinky fingers, the base of both thumbs, the elbows, the knees, and the spine. If joints extend/flex past a certain degree, that is considered a positive score for that joint. For this assessment, the higher the assessment, the greater hyper mobility and laxity of joints present.
A positive test results occurs when about 4-5/9 joints are measured as hyper mobile in adults, with someme sources saying 6/9 for children before puberty and 4/9 for older adults. A test is also positive if a person answers 2 or more historical questions positively.
Further Reading
Additional Notes
Licensing Note: The procedures and examples of using the Beighton Scoring system are available free across several websites.
Learn More: Cut-offs for determining hyper mobility varies, so it is important to identify which cut-offs your workplace uses.
