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Abstract
Mental foramen is a funnel-shaped structure which releases the mental nerve. It is an important landmark and must be located before any surgical procedures to avoid complications such as neurovascular bundle damage. The location of mental foramen also plays an important role in estimating age and sex. Mental foramen position can be identified easily using radiographic views like panoramic, cone beam computed tomography (CBCT), computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Mandible bone a part of skull can be used instead of the whole skull especially that the mandible showed that it is the strongest bone in the human body and withstand high degree of temperature being well preserved, within the mandible mental foramina are found which there position easily indicates race and sex
The main objective is to assess the variation of position of the mental foramen for both sexes and sides of the jaw of Malays and Chinese.
A total of 200 digital panoramic views for two main ethnic groups (Malays and Chinese) aged between 17-30 years old were selected from the Hospital USM archive which met the inclusion and exclusion criteria, horizontal and vertical measurements of the mental foramen were done by using digital ruler of Planmeca Romexis software Finland. Sex and Ethnicity difference were evaluated. Males had significantly high mean values than females (p <0.001) when measuring all parameters (horizontal and vertical) while only MFr-IBM and MFl-IBM of vertical measurements showed high mean in Chinese than Malay (p <0.001).
it is now possible to state that ethnicity and gender can easily be indicated by the vertical and the horizontal measurements of the mental foramen among Malaysian population.
Clinical article (J Int Dent Med Res 2021; 14(1): 286-291)
Keywords: Mental foramen location, ethnicity estimation, gender estimation.
Received date: 12 September 2020_Accept date: 14 November 2020
Introduction
Mental foramen is a funnel-shaped structure which releases the mental nerve. It is an important landmark and must be located before surgical procedures to avoid complications such as neurovascular bundle damage. The location of mental foramen also plays an important role in estimating age and 1 sex'.
The location of mental foramen goes through three main phases from childhood to old ages. In a newborn it is located near to the inferior border...