Sexing of adult hip bone

Abstract

The hip bone is the most commonly used bone in medicolegal examination for the determination of sex of human skeletal remains. In recent studies it was observed that many of the commonly used parameters were not much reliable. The aim of the present study was to develop a parameter which is easy to apply and can determine the sex in most of the hip bones with 100% accuracy. The material of the study consisted of 210 adult hip bones from individuals of known sex(147 male and 63 female). The following four linear measurements were taken which reflected the differences in size of the pelvic cavity in the two sexes(i.e., length of the arcuate line; length of the ilial part of arcuate line, length of the sacropelvic line and height of the pelvic cavity). All these measurements showed statistically significant differences (P<0.001) between males and females. However, when "demarking points" (DPs) of these parameters were worked out, these were of little value in the identification of sex. Therefore, three indices based on the above four linear measurements were developed i.e., "height of pelvic cavity / length of arcuate line"; "height of pelvic cavity / length of ilial part of arcuate line" and "length of sacropelvic line / length of arcuate line". When DPs of these indices were worked out it was revealed that the index "height of pelvic cavity / length of arcuate line" was an excellent parameter, which identified 78% of male and 88% of female hip bones of right side and 74% of male and 77 % of female hip bones of left side.