Abstract
ABSTRACT Objetive To determine the percentage of correctness of the Orbital Index (OI) for estimation of sex, ancestry and age in Brazilian skulls. Methods Cross-sectional study of 183 human dry skulls from the southeastern Brazil. A total of 100 skeletons were males and 83 females; of which 36 were aged up to 39 years, 60 aged between 40 and 59 years, and 87 aged 60 years or older. As for ancestry, 103 were from white, 51 mixed race, and 29 black individuals. The OI was calculate by the formula = height/width x 100. The data were submitted to Student’s t test, F (ANOVA), Tukey and Kruskal Wallis tests as well as to discriminant analysis, with a 5% significance level. Results The sample was characterized as mesoseme, with a mean age of 56.62 (±19.97) years. No significant difference was observed (p=0.511) between the OI in females (right: 86.43 ± 6.58 and left: 86.70 ± 5.93) and males (right: 85.78 ± 6.69 and left: 86.37 ± 6.20). There were no significant differences between age, ancestry and the variables analyzed (p>0.05). The right and left orbital widths were significantly dimorphic between sexes (p<0.001). The percentage of correctness of the method for estimation of sex, age and ancestry was found to be 65.6%, 43.7%, and 43.6%, respectively. Conclusions The OI is not an appropriate method for estimation of sex, ancestry and estimation of age in this Brazilian sample. The methodology should be expanded to other population groups so that it can be improved.
Highlights
Cranial reference measures have been essential to distinguish between normal variability and abnormalities in the diagnostic assessment of neurological diseases [1,2]
The standard deviation was found to be 19.97 years, which indicated a mild variability as the deviation was lower than half the value of the corresponding mean
As for age, most skulls corresponded to individuals aged 60 years (47.5%) or older at death, followed by those aged 40 to 59 years (32.8%) and up to 39 years (19.7%)
Summary
Cranial reference measures have been essential to distinguish between normal variability and abnormalities in the diagnostic assessment of neurological diseases [1,2]. By using visual and metric comparison of unknown bones with those of known origin [4], the study of human dry skulls can provide important information to support the anthropological characterization (sex, age, ancestry and height) [5]. These approaches may aid in the human identification process with up to 90% precision when analyzed separately [5,6]. As for ancestry, Africans have rectangular orbits, northern and southern Europeans present angular orbits, while central Europeans and Asians have orbits with a round shape [10]
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