Morphometric analysis of the mandibular ramus and its clinical and medicolegal significance

ABSTRACT

Background: During natural calamities entire skeleton of single person could not be found. In such case, determination of sex with fragments of the bone available required range of data with proven accuracy. Hence this study is aimed at to provide range of data for minimum number of parameters of the ramus of the mandible.Methods: Three hundred dry mandibles of known sexes and bearing all teeth or intact alveolar margin were included in the study. Vertical height; maximum and minimum breadths of the ramus of the mandible were measured. All the data were analyzed for significance of the occurrence in relation to sex and laterality by means of paired t-test.Results: On the basis of all the three parameters together, we got 95% accuracy in determination of sex. Statistically significant differences were found in all parameters between male and female mandibles. The laterality distributions for all the parameters were found to be insignificant.Conclusions: Accurate determination of sex from the available bone fragments such as the ramus of the mandible required wide number of data from the least parameters that could be utilized medicolegally.