Morphometric Study of Cephalofacial Indices among Ogoni Children in Rivers State

Abstract

Anthropometry can be defined as the art and science of measurements of physical dimensions of parts or whole of human body. Cephalofacial measurement is an important anthropometry, which generates data that form important indices for studying brain growth and formation of facial types. This descriptive study involves 390 Ogoni Children (215 males and 175 females) between the ages of 5-12 years. Since very few studies have been done on Nigerian infants, the aim of this study is to evaluate the Cephalofacial morphology of Ogoni Children and describe sexual dimorphism among the population study. The length and width of the head and face of each subject was measured to determine the cephalic Index and facial Index of each subject and evaluate the prevalent head and face type of the population study. The results showed that mean values of the cephalic and facial indices were higher for males than females. The mean cephalic Index values were 71.85±3.79 and 71.79±3.86 for males and females respectively. The difference in these values were not found to be statistically significant and thus cannot be useful in describing sexual dimorphism among the study population (p>0.05). The mean facial Index values were 85.35±6.05 and 83.86±4.86 for males and females respectively. The difference found in these values were statistically significant (p<0.05) and thus was useful in describing sexual dimorphism. The results also showed that dolichocephalic head type was the most prevalent with males (47.44%) having a higher percentage prevalence than females (41.71%), while euryprosopic facial type was the most prevalent with females (42.29%) having a higher percentage prevalence than males (37.21%).