Assessment of Velar Morphological Variants as Gender Determination Tool in Kanpur Population: A Digital Cephalometric Study

Abstract

Background: The posterior fibromuscular part of the palate that attaches to the hard palate is what is often referred to as the soft palate. To distinguish between sexes, this research measured the velar for length, breadth, and morphological diversity. Materials and Methods: One hundred and fifty boys and girls, ages 15–25, had digital lateral cephalograms obtained. Using the taxonomy proposed by You et al., we categorized velar morphology into six different types and conducted an in-depth analysis of each. The resting length of the soft palate may be seen as a straight line stretching from the back of the nose to the tip of the uvula. It was also determined how wide the soft palate really is. IBM SPSS statistics 21 was used for the statistical analysis. The mean, the standard deviation, and the percentage distribution were used to describe the data. To ensure that the data were normally distributed, the Shapiro–Wilk test was run on them. Comparisons of clusters of discrete categories were made using the Chi-square test. To identify statistically significant differences between the sexes, we employed the independent Student's t-test. The mean length and width of different velar shapes of both genders were calculated using an analysis of variance test. Results: Type 2 was more common in males than in Types 1, 3, or 6. Form 6 was the rarest of the forms. Type 1 was more common among women than any of the other types, including Types 2, 3, and 6. The most frequent kind was Type 1. The veli of men are much longer and broader than those of females. Conclusion: In light of all the metric measurements from the current study, gender can be established from the length, width, and soft palate morphology.