The value of sex determination by using patella metrical measurements in Iranian over 64 years old cadavers referred to Legal Medicine Organization - Tehran Center

One of the big problems in legal medicine is personal Identification in cases of skeletal remains or conditions such as mutilation and so on. The first step is determination of sex as it immediately excludes approximately half of the population. When the skull and the pelvis are available determination of sex will be made easily but it is not always available and sometimes because of explosions and air crashes, we confront with incomplete cadavers, so we should search for other elements of the skeleton. One of the elements that recently is paid more attention is patella. Patella is a cesamoid and compacted bone developed in the tendon of quadriceps muscle and it's size is dependent on the muscle mass so it will be bigger in the males and we can measure the patellas of male and females to determine the differences between them for sex determination. In this study three metrical characteristics include max height, max width and max thickness of patella were measured from 46 corps over 64 years old that referred to autopsy hall of Tehran Legal Medicine Center. For statistical analysis of data the statistical product and service solution (SPSS version 16) program was used and univariate and multivariate discriminant function analysis were performed to indicate the efficiency of each variable for sex determination. The mean of patella height in male was 4.49 centimeter and in female was 3.78 the mean of patella width in male was 4.47 and in female was 3.99 and the mean of patella thickness in male was 2.10 and in female was 1.97. Among these measurements max width and max height with average accuracy %89.1 and then max thickness with %80.4 were respectively better variables for sex determination. Also in multivariate discriminant analysis combination of all three measurements simultaneously with average accuracy %93.5 was the best function for sex determination. The results of this study revealed that we can determine the sex with high confidence just by using the patella measurements.