Department of Biomedical Sciences and Surgery Specialties, University of Ferrara, 44100 Ferrara, Italy.
Int J Legal Med. 2013 Sep;127(5):1039-44. doi: 10.1007/s00414-013-0822-y. Epub 2013 Jan 24.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the lateral angle (LA) method-based on the measurement of the angle at which the internal acoustic canal opens up to the surface of the petrous bone-for sex determination in cremated skeletal remains of Italians. The sample consisted of 160 adult individuals of known age and sex who had recently died and were cremated in the crematorium of Ferrara (northern Italy). Several studies have demonstrated that the petrous portion of the temporal bone may be a valuable tool for sex diagnosis in unburned skeletal remains. Since petrous bones are usually preserved after cremation, this method could be of particular interest in the case of burned skeletal remains. The repeatability of intra- and inter-observer measurements was good. The results indicated that male and female lateral angles were significantly different but that the values did not differ among age-groups. There was no bilateral difference in LA. However, neither the 45° angle, proposed in earlier studies as the sectioning point for this variable from male and female data distributions, nor another angular value allowed satisfactory discrimination between the sexes in our sample. The influence of the "age" factor (about 82 % of females were of ≥ 75 years of age) on the results is critically discussed. The results of this study suggest that the LA method is not sufficiently reliable to assess the sex of elderly Italian individuals from their burned remains and thus should only be used in conjunction with other sexing techniques.
本研究旨在评估基于内听道在颞骨表面开口角度的侧角（LA）方法，以确定意大利人火化骨骼遗骸的性别。样本由 160 名已知年龄和性别的成年个体组成，他们最近在费拉拉（意大利北部）的火葬场去世并被火化。多项研究表明，颞骨的岩部可能是未燃烧骨骼遗骸性别诊断的有用工具。由于火化后通常会保留岩骨，因此这种方法在燃烧骨骼遗骸的情况下可能特别有趣。内部和外部观察者测量的重复性很好。结果表明，男性和女性的侧角明显不同，但在年龄组之间没有差异。LA 没有双侧差异。然而，在我们的样本中，无论是之前研究中提出的作为该变量从男性和女性数据分布中进行分段的 45°角，还是其他角度值，都无法令人满意地区分性别。“年龄”因素（约 82%的女性年龄≥75 岁）对结果的影响受到严格讨论。本研究的结果表明，LA 方法不够可靠，无法从意大利老年人的火化遗骸中评估其性别，因此仅应与其他性别鉴定技术一起使用。
