Benign hypermobility joint syndrome impact on the injuries in jazz dancers

Introduction
Hypermobility is diagnosed by detecting asymptomatic and increased mobility of the joints over accepted standards. It might be inborn or practiced. The second one is a result of regular exercising e.g. dance career which generates loads in excess of tissues’ capacity of repairing which is leading to many chronic injuries. Main purpose of the research was to detect a correlation between the joint hypermobility presence and the injury occurrence in jazz dancers group.

Material and methods
The research have been conducted among 30 jazz dancers and 30 non-dancers. There has been used a survey with the following questions related with the physical activity, treatment of the occurred injuries, type of the stabilizing exercises, pain’s frequency and intensity (VAS Pain). In order to examine a hypermobility Beighton Score was used.

Results
In 27 dancers the joint hypermobility was detected and 23 of them suffered an injury in their life. The most common type of injury was a biceps femoris muscle strain (12 people). An average number of points from Beighton Score was 5.53. In the control group the hypermobility was detected in 9 people. An average number of points was 2.13. Mostly dancers were complaining about the pain in the knee joint (15 people, avg. 2.07 VAS points). In the control group the pain was related with the lumbar spine column (12 people, avg. 1.33 VAS points). The points from Beighton Score reached by the dancers was correlated with the injuries occurrence. The time of doing stabilizing exercises had no impact on the prevalent contusions but there was a correlation between the time and the frequency and intensity of the pain.

Conclusions
Benign hypermobility joint syndrome was more common among the dancers than non-dancers and was related with pain occurrence.