Dear Marina Arleevskaya,

The online free calculator is available at

http://www.das-score.nl/das28/DAScalculators/dasculators.html

However, I would suggest that you download their free app through your smartphone. Thus you will be able to calculate the scores while at clinic in an instant and will not need continuous net connectivity

regards

The 66/68 joint count is not routinely used in the usual disease activity calculators. Unless your patient group has a lot of feet involvement (which would not be picked up in the commonly used DAS28), then the DAS28 should be sufficient. Unlike the DAS28, I think that there are no accepted cutoff levels for assessing disease activity based on the 66/68 counts. If you need to assess more than 28 joints, there is a Ritchie Articular Index (RAI) that counts 44 joints (including some lower limb joints).

Dear Swan, thank you very much for the detailed answer. And yet, every time we mark the affected 68/66 joints on the funny manikin. Somehow  the temporo - mandibular joints and others are to be taken into account

Marina

As Swan has explained, the DAS28 is usually used in clinic and in research studies for RA patients, where the 28 joints chosen are easy to access and usually representative of the disease activity. The original DAS covered 44 joints, and you will find it at http://www.das-score.nl/das28/DAScalculators/dasculators.html. There are some studies (especially Dutch) that still quote the DAS.

In practice, I use the DAS28 in RA but I also note any sore joints in the ankles and feet as well using the manikin. The 66/68 joint scores are more commonly used for Psoriatic arthritis where the distribution of joint involvement is more random/unpredictable.