Indicadores Morfológicos de Dimorfismo Sexual em Crânios Humanos

• Autor(a) principal: Galdames, Iván Claudio Suazo [UNIFESP]
• Data de Publicação: 2009
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNIFESP
• Texto Completo: http://repositorio.unifesp.br/handle/11600/9739
• topic: Crânios; Dimorfismo sexual; Antropologia forense; Identificação humana; Antropologia física

Objetive: The purpose of this study is to assess the quality, as a diagnostic test, of the main indicators of morphological sexual dimorphism in dry human skulls from the skull Museum Collection of the Universidade Federal de São Paulo, through direct anthropometry and using biostatistics tools and clinical epidemiology. Methodology: We used 284 skulls of adult Brazilians, of whom 187 were male and 97 female. A study of cross-evaluation of diagnostic test, for it was a qualitative approach based on visual examination of 16 traditional indicators of morphological sexual dimorphism, determined for each level of accuracy, sensitivity, predictive values, likelihood ratios and Odds ratios. Results and Conclusions: All indicators studied had high levels of accuracy (84.75- 72.89%). The best indicators in terms of overall accuracy, intraobserver error and odds ratios values were found in traits whose formation is related to insertion and action of major muscle groups. The lower accuracy of all the morphological indicators assumed as diagnostic tests in this study was obtained in those based on the observation of the way. In 14 of the 16 indicators intraobserver error was <10%. The best indicators of morphological sexual dimorphism based on the combined ranking of the general accuracy, reliability, and Odds Ratios were: the mastoid process, the zygomatic bone, the mandible and the roughness of the occipital bone. The indicators with the lowest overall performance were the shape of the palate, chin and orbit. The tools of statistical epidemiological contributed to complement and make more robust analysis, especially when considering the overall sensitivity of the indicators and values of likelihood ratios. We concluded that morphological dimorphism indicators presents an adequate performance as diagnostic tests, but the values of accuracy and sensitivity must be matched with more robust indicators that are independent of the distribution of the sample and integrate the diagnostic errors (false positives and negatives ) as the likelihood ratios, odds ratios and positive predictive values.