A study of relation of stature with foot length in first year medical students of south indian origin

Stature is the height of the person in the upright posture. It is an important measure of physical identity. Establishing the identity of an individual from mutilated, decomposed and amputed body fragments has become an important necessity in recent times due to natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, floods and man-made disasters like terror attacks, bomb blasts, mass accidents, wars, plane crashes etc. The present study was conducted at Department of Anatomy of DM- Wayanad Institute of Medical Sciences, Wayanad, kerala and Srinivas Institute of Medical Sciences, Mangalore, Karnataka. Sample size was taken as 450 (200 male and 250 female). Stature in Males varied from 138 cm to 184 cm, Stature in Females varied from 132 cm to 166 cm. Foot length in Males varied between 20.2 to 28.6 cm, In females range of Foot length was from 20.3 to 27.4cm. The correlation coefficient between height and foot length is + 0.658 in male and + 0.567 in female which is highly significant. Estimation of stature among the population can be carried out using foot length and there is positive correlation between stature and foot length in a particular population.