CORRELATION OF HUMAN HEIGHT WITH HAND LENGTH IN INDIAN INDIVIDUALS

Abstract

Introduction: The est imat ion of sex and stature is crucial in ident ifying the individual especially when the body has been dest royed, decomposed or certain parts of unknown vict im remains either in mass disasters like plane crash, mass suicide, homicides, t rain and road accidents, tsunamis, forest fires, earth quakes or from those disposed off in gut ters or waste dumps. The estimat ion of height is a very important parameter in anthropometric measurements, in ident ificat ion in medico-legal cases and in establishment of racial differences. The hand length varies in different races and ethnic groups and is used to determine sex, stature and nut rit ional status of an individual Aims: To study the relationship of human height with hand length and to derive a mathemat ical module to predict the height from hand length. M aterials and M ethods: The This study has been done in Ramaiah Medical College in the year 2016 where hand length and height of 220 individuals aged between 18 and 25 years of age in and around Bangalore has been measured in cent imeters. Descript ive stat ist ics, Pearson’s correlat ion coefficient and Linear regression were employed for the Stat ist ical analysis of the data Results: There was a weak posit ive correlat ion between height and hand length of both sides (r= 0.25, 0.26; p<0.001) which was stat ist ically significant . Conclusion: It was observed from the present study that , there was a weak posit ive correlat ion between height and hand length. However, further analysis revealed that hand length alone is not sufficient for accurate predict ion of height . KEYWORDS: Hand Length, Stature, Correlat ion, Height , Anthropomet ry, Regression Equat ion.