Morphological variation of head and face shapes in 17-25 years old adult population of Nepal

Abstract

Abstract Introduction: Cephalic Index and Prosopic Index are very useful anthropometric tool to find out racial and sexual differences and also give a clue to genetic transmission of inherited characteristics from parents to their offspring. Materials and Methods: A descriptive non-interventional cross-sectional study was conducted on normal undergraduate medical students of Nepalese origin from BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, Nepal on September 2012. A total of 313 (male=186 and female=127) Nepalese young adult students with their ages ranging from 17-25 years were included for the study after taking permission from institutional ethical board and committee. All the measurements were carried out after careful palpation of the head for anatomical landmarks and measurements were taken to the nearest 1mm. Results obtained were presented as mean and standard deviation. Independent student t test and anova test was applied to find out the gender, geographical and ethnic differences. A “p” value of < 0.05 was considered to indicate statistical significance. Results: The head and face form of males were hyperbrachicephalic and mesoprosopic respectively and of females were mesocephalic and leptoprosopic respectively.The head and face form of Tibeto-Nepalese were hyperbrachicephalic and mesoprosopic; of Indigenous were brachiocepalic and mesoprosopic and of Indo-Nepalese were mesocephalic and leptoprosopic respectively. Conclusion: Thus the racial factor, gender, geographical and regional variations influences the craniofacial anthropometry especially head and faces form.