Ortopantomographic blind test of mandibular ramus flexure as a morphological indicator of sex in Chilean young adults

Abstract

Loth & Henneberg (1996) described a simple morphological feature for sex determination by observing the flexure of the posterior margin of the mandibular ramus, at the level of the plane occlusal. The purpose of this study is to analyze the level of agreement for determining the sex by observing the parameters described by Loth and Henneberg, in ortopantomography of totally dentate Chilean young adults. This study is based on 188 files of ortopantomography acquired from the Department of Radiology of the Dental School of Universidad de Talca, Chile. In brief, our studies indicated that in the ortopantomography of females 63.25% (62-64.5%) was correctly sexed, whereas the prediction accuracy was only 48.25% (46.5-50%) for men. The success percentages were lower than those reported by Loth and Henneberg, which justifies the necessity to evaluate the methods of anthropological-forensic analysis that are used in our population.