Assessing Ramus Dimorphism of Jordanian Mandibles

Wala M Amin^1,

¹Faculty of Dentistry, University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan

Cite this paper

Wala M Amin. Assessing Ramus Dimorphism of Jordanian Mandibles. American Journal of Medical and Biological Research. 2018; 6(1):1-6. doi: 10.12691/AJMBR-6-1-1

Abstract

This investigation deals with descriptively examining the mandibular rami of young Jordanian adults for the presence or the lack of it of a flexure at the posterior border of a ramus; and evaluating the role of ramus flexure in sex identification. Three-dimensional (3D) rendered Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) images of a normative sample comprising 270 images were selected, of which 147 belonged to male patients and 123 images to females. Strict exclusion criteria were applied in selecting images. Each image was examined for the presence of a flexure on the posterior border of the ramus, which was carefully delineated and the occlusal plane marked, guided by the height of cusp tips of the mandibular molars. The results indicated that the ramus flexure method of sex prediction was more accurately diagnostic for females (85.1%), than for males (78.9%); this gave rise to an overall diagnostic accuracy of 82.2% which is below the reported 90.6-99.0% by Loth & Henneberg. Our results, however, agreed with the reported findings of other researchers. In conclusion, ramus flexure provides an acceptable predictive accuracy and could be considered as a supplementary rather than a definitive mean of sex determination.

Keywords

sex dimorphism, ramus flexure, morphologic trait, predictive accuracy, forensic fossils, skeletal remains

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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