Study of metric variations in mandibles of Southeastern Brazilians

Considering that Brazil does not have an anthropometric database to characterize its population, it is essential to obtain data to standardize craniometric measurements to assist human identification. The present work aims to obtain the metric variations of the mandible of adult Brazilians of full toothed (FT), total toothless (TT), and partial toothless (PT) adult Brazilian mandibles, which were measured in millimeters using a digital caliper. The data obtained were: Depth of the body of the mandible (88.15mm for FT, 85.08mm for TT, and 88.47mm for PT); Intercondylar width (115.4mm for FT, 113.1mm for TT, and 115.8mm for PT); intercoronoid width (94.95mm for FT, 93.99mm for TT, and 94.67mm for PT); bigonial width (94.95mm for FT, 94.7mm for TT, and 95.66mm for PT); mentonian height average (28.15mm for FT, 23.01mm for TT, and 27.29mm for PT); length of the body of the mandible (97.32mm for FT, 94.35mm for TT, and 97.27mm for PT); width of the ramus of mandible (33.01mm for FT, 27.81mm for TT and 31.13mm for PT); and coronoid-condylar distance (38.41mm for FT, 36.33mm for TT and 39mm for PT). There were significant differences in the values of mentonian height (MH) when comparing toothed (FT) with toothless (TT) upper and lower maxillaries (p=0.0003), as well as when comparing toothless (TT) with partial edentate (PT) (p=0.0448). Thus, it is suggested that these differences may be related to the absence (total or partial) of the dentition, which can lead to bone absorption and biomechanical remodeling.