If a patient with ankylosing spondylitis regularly sees a rheumatologist, the rheumatologist will from time to time perform mobility measurements to check whether and how fast the disease progressed since the previous measurements. Mobility measurements offer a basis for the assessment of the severity of the individual course of the disease and thus also for decisions concerning the appropriate treatment.
Even more than for the assessment of an individual course of the disease, mobility measurements are essential in scientific studies such as the comparison of different treatment modalities or the analysis of the efficacy of a particular drug with respect to the long-term outcome.
A standardization of measurement methods has turned out to be reasonable because only then can the results of different examiners be compared.
For ankylosing spondylitis, an international working group of researchers, the “Assessment of SpondyloArthritis international Society” (ASAS) has, since 1995, undertaken the task to elaborate uniform assessment scores and measuring methods.
ASAS has also created standardized criteria for determining, which of the patients in scientific studies have improved by the therapy. The ASAS resolutions represent an essential part of the booklet described here.
ASIF vice president Ernst Feldtkeller who is also member of ASAS, has created – in cooperation with ASAS president Désirée van der Heijde and ASAS members Walter P. Maksymowych and Robert D. Inman (who are also members of the Spondyloarthritis Research Consortium of Canada, SPARCC), a well illustrated handy booklet collecting all these scores.
The assessment scores described include the Schober test for lumbar spine flexion, tragus-to-wall distance, occiput-to-wall distance, chin-to-jugulum distance, chest expansion, Mennell’s sign for sacroiliac joint inflammation, lateral spinal flexion, cervical mobility by angle measurements, hip joint mobility by measuring the maximal intermalleolar distance or by measuring the maximal internal hip rotation, finger-to-floor distance, BASDAI, BASFI, BASMI, EDASMI, mSASSS and BASRI, ASspiMRI-a and ASspiMRI-c, SPARCC MRI, and BAS-G. ASAS criteria for short-time remission of ankylosing spondylitis are also included.
The booklet also contains chapters on criteria internationally agreed upon which define what is understood under ankylosing spondylitis and under spondyloarthritis, and criteria facilitating the diagnosis: Rome criteria for ankylosing spondylitis, New York criteria for AS, grading of sacroiliitis, modified New York criteria, criteria for inflammatory low back pain, diagnostic criteria proposed by Mau et al. and by Cats et al., Amor criteria for the spondyloarthritides, ESSG criteria for the spondyloarthritides and the diagnostic algorithm proposed by Rudwaleit and Sieper.
Since 2004, three editions of the booklet have already been published in the German language by the ankylosing spondylitis patient organisation in Germany (Deutsche Vereinigung Morbus Bechterew, see the DVMB booklet series). The present version is the first edition in English language.
SPARCC has agreed to be co-publisher of the booklet. The printing has been made possible thanks to the Arthritis Society of Canada and the National Ankylosing Spondylitis Society (NASS) of Great Britain.
The booklet may be ordered from the office of the National Ankylosing Spondylitis Society (NASS). or from the Spondyloarthritis Research Consortium of Canada (SPARCC).