Carpal Height Ratio In Kashmiri Population: A Study Of One Hundred And Twenty Wrist Radiographs

ABSTRACT

Background: Morphometry of the human skeleton not only varies from one ethnic group to another but alsobetween the individuals of the same race. The morphometric measurements of human skeleton have implicationsin orthopaedic surgery with respect to diagnosis of the pathology as well as with respect to surgical treatment ofthe same. One such important index in orthopaedics is the carpal height ratio. In this study we evaluated thecarpal height ratio using different methods in our healthy population to formulate a reference database withwhich a pathological value can be compared and also compared our data with that of the different races in theliterature.Subject and Methods: This study was conducted on 120 normal wrist radiographs. The carpal height ratio andthe revised carpal height ratio were calculated using Youm’s and Nattrass methods respectively. The results wereevaluated statistically and the ratios between two age groups and between male and female gender were comparedusing t-test. A p-value of > 0.05 was considered as statistically significant.Results: The age of the patients ranged from 19 to 60 years with a mean of 39.2 years. The mean carpal heightratio was 0.52 ± 0.05 (range 0.45 to 0.63) and the revised carpal height ratio ranged from 1.42 to 1.61 with a meanof 1.50 ± 0.06. There was no statistically significant difference in these ratios between the two age groups andbetween the genders.Conclusion: A reference database of Youm’s carpal height ratio and Nattrass revised carpal height ratio in ourpopulation has been formulated. We did not find any significant difference of these ratios between male andfemale wrists and also these ratios do not change significantly with the advancing age.