Joint hypermobility

Abstract

Patients with joint hypermobility, perhaps the mildest of the various inherited abnormalities of connective tissue, may present to a rheumatologist or general practitioner although a large proportion are recognized by health professionals, particularly physiotherapists. Hypermobility may be generalized or extreme at a small number of joints. Sometimes it is associated with involvement of other organs because of abnormal inherited collagen structure elsewhere. A small proportion of patients will have one of the more serious conditions such as Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Marfan's syndrome or osteogenesis imperfecta. Management is multidisciplinary requiring a team including physicians, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and podiatrists, among others. Patients often wait a long time before receiving their definitive diagnosis and are sometimes dismissed as malingerers. Patients often have a lot of queries about their condition unrelated to their joints. Among these are whether there will be problems in pregnancy, whether the condition will be passed on to their children, whether symptoms arising from organs other than the joints are related and whether they might have been incorrectly accused of battering their children.