Medical records
Range of motion (ROM)
Range of motion is the measured arc through which a joint moves — recorded in degrees, compared against normal values, and one of the few injury findings in a chart that is quantified rather than described.
Charts record ROM two ways: active (the patient moves the joint) and passive (the examiner moves it). Values appear in degrees against population norms — cervical rotation ~80°, lumbar flexion ~60°, shoulder abduction ~180° — or as fractions of normal (“ROM 50% of expected”). “Full ROM” or “ROM WNL” means the examiner found no measurable restriction.
Why it matters for legal readers
ROM is the rare damages fact with numbers attached, which makes it graphable across time: restriction at the first post-incident visit, progress through therapy, plateau, and whatever remains at discharge. That curve is the injury narrative — and permanent ROM deficits feed directly into impairment ratings under the AMA Guides.
Read it critically in both directions. Active ROM is effort-dependent, so defense examiners note discrepancies between measured restriction and observed movement (the patient who can’t rotate 30° on exam but turns freely to grab a bag). Passive-versus-active differences, and consistency across visits and providers, are the reliability checks. A single dramatic measurement in one note, surrounded by “full ROM” findings, deserves suspicion from whichever side it hurts.
In the fact record
Because ROM values are structured data hiding in prose, extracting them onto a timeline turns scattered exam notes into the recovery curve — with each measurement cited to its page.