Study on mandibular parameters of forensic significance

Abstract

Introduction: Bones often survive the process of decay and therefore provide the major evidence of human age and sex after death. The identification of human skeletal remains is a critical problem and is very important in medico-legal and anthropological works. The determination of sex of an individual is important and necessary both in the living and dead for medico-legal purposes. The aim of this study is to measure and analyze the various parameters of the mandible and to assess the reliability of the above parameters in terms of percentage accuracy in sex determination. Material and Methods: A total of 106 whole-adult human mandibles of unknown sex, between the age group of 18–60 years, were collected and studied at the Department of Anatomy and Forensic Medicine, Guntur Medical College, Guntur from 2014 to 2015. The following parameters studied were symphyseal height, mandibular body length, bicondylar diameter, bigonial diameter, inter incisor width, and mandibular angle. Results: Of the six parameters studied, highly significant (statistically) difference in sex was observed in bigonial diameter (82.15% accuracy) and mandibular angle (81.5% accuracy). Discussion and Conclusion: The inference of the study is that no single parameter gives 100% accuracy in the determination of the sex of the individual. Hence, a judicious consideration of the highly significant parameters of the mandible may be taken into account in the determination of the sex of the individual.