A study of sex determination from human patellae in a tertiary care centre

AUTHOR(s) : Panja Saumabrata1 , Sardar Tanmay2 , Bose Tapas Kumar3 , Roy DG4
DOI No. : 10.31741/ijhrmlp.v4.i2.2018.5

ABSTRACT :
For forensic personnel sex determination from bones is a critical factor and is commonly assessed by the morphological-metric traits of the pelvis, skull and long bones. However sometimes in cases of mass fatalities like blast injury or air- craft accidents these bones are unavailable for identification or very much fragmented. So sex prediction must be attempted from other parts of skeleton where as patella, being a sesamoid bone that forms within the tendon of the quadriceps muscle, is a robust bone and survives being fragmented which may be able to give valuable information for determination of sex of an individual.Aims: To find out any significant sexual differentiation between male and female by using different measurements and weight of patella of both sides.Methods:187 dead bodies (96 males and 91 females) were taken for the study from representative sample of different age group & sex, keeping in mind of inclusion and exclusion criteria.Results: This study is in agreement with most of the previous studies and small bones also show sexual dimorphism. Conclusion: With the implementation of discriminant function analysis it can be concluded that we can determine sex based on patella morphometry with quite high confidence limit.

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