Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Jodhpur 342005, India.
Department of Anthropology, Panjab University, Chandigarh 160014, India.
Forensic Sci Int. 2021 Aug;325:110811. doi: 10.1016/j.forsciint.2021.110811. Epub 2021 Apr 29.
Forensic age estimation is routinely applied in investigations involving identification of individuals. Over the past century a myriad of methods have been devised for age estimation. One such method, proposed by Suchey and Brooks in 1990, groups the observed changes occurring in the pubic symphysis into six phases, each defined by a corresponding age range. The present study was piloted with the focussed question being to empirically determine the accuracy of the Suchey-Brooks method in computed tomographic age estimation by analysing morphological changes occurring in the pubic symphysis. Original articles pertaining to the use of the Suchey-Brooks method for CT based age estimation were extracted from four different databases- PubMed, CENTRAL, Google Scholar and ScienceDirect. Research papers which were answering the focussed question were selected for data analysis. After assessing the risk of bias of the selected articles, the data was subjected to Meta-analysis. Pooled analysis of correctly/accurately aged individuals/remains using the random and fixed effect models yielded a prediction percentage of 78% and 86%, respectively. Higher percentages were obtained for phase-wise and subgroup analysis, indicating that the Suchey-Brooks method is a reliable method for age estimation.
法医年龄估计在涉及个体识别的调查中经常使用。在过去的一个世纪里，已经设计出了无数种用于年龄估计的方法。1990 年，Suchuey 和 Brooks 提出的一种方法将观察到的耻骨联合发生的变化分为六个阶段，每个阶段都有相应的年龄范围。本研究以实证确定 Suchey-Brooks 方法在 CT 年龄估计中的准确性为重点问题，通过分析耻骨联合发生的形态变化来进行。从四个不同的数据库（PubMed、CENTRAL、Google Scholar 和 ScienceDirect）中提取了与 Suchey-Brooks 方法在 CT 年龄估计中应用相关的原始文章。选择回答重点问题的研究论文进行数据分析。在评估所选文章的偏倚风险后，对数据进行了荟萃分析。使用随机和固定效应模型对正确/准确估计年龄的个体/遗骸进行汇总分析，分别得到 78%和 86%的预测百分比。分阶段和分组分析获得了更高的百分比，表明 Suchey-Brooks 方法是一种可靠的年龄估计方法。
