Reliability of odontometrics in gender determination: A systematic review

Gender determination in forensic anthropology is an essential step for medico-legal purposes and crucial for identification as the number of possible matches is reduced to half. Tooth crown dimensions are reasonably accurate predictors of gender determination and are useful in its assessment. Gender dimorphism in tooth size and accuracy of odontometric prediction is found to vary in different populations and therefore it is necessary to determine specific population values in order to make identification possible.

To systematically review studies describing and testing/validating different odontometric methods used for gender determination and to assess their accuracy.

An electronic exploration was done; studies were assessed and included based on the reported data. In particular, data criteria were set regarding the considered population, sample size, age range, gender estimation method, type of statistical analysis and study outcome. Meta-analysis was used to compare the study outcomes per obtained study groups. Fifteen published studies were considered after review of title, abstract and full-text. The gender determination methods used were the crown diameters, cervical diagonal diameters, mesiodistal and buccolingual cervical diameters of teeth, inter canine and premolar width and mandibular canine index.

The variety of published gender determination methods highlights the importance of such methods in human identification. Linear odontometrics was the most accurate sex estimation method but in situations where it is difficult to take correct measurements of linear dimensions of teeth, alternative measurements can be used consistently to determine gender along with other anthropological methods.