Digital Anthropometric Analysis of Palatal Rugae Pattern in Qassim Population, Saudi Arabia

Application of Calcorrugoscopy for Assessing Variations in Palatal Rugae Pattern among the Native Population of Riyadh Province in Saudi Arabia

“…Straight rugae were more present in males than females in this sample, and curved, convergent, and branched rugae were more present in females than males. This varies from Saudi Arabia's previous findings (4) . In most studies, wavy and straight type palatal rugae were the most common form of rugae without sex variation.…”

“…Globally, many authors have reported palatal rugae's unification as a method for identifying a person's ethnicity, although there are only a few studies from Saudi Arabia to compare. Elmoazen and Elsherbini (4) demonstrated less common unification (3.3% diverge form and 2.1% converging form) among the Qassim population of Saudi Arabia, while the present study found an increase in unification among females on the left side (57.9% convergent and 42.1% divergent cases) and males on the right side (7.7 % convergent and 89.7 % divergent cases). Elmoazen and Elsherbini (4) used digital photographs to identify palatal rugae, whereas we employed manually delineated study casts.…”

“…Elmoazen and Elsherbini (4) demonstrated less common unification (3.3% diverge form and 2.1% converging form) among the Qassim population of Saudi Arabia, while the present study found an increase in unification among females on the left side (57.9% convergent and 42.1% divergent cases) and males on the right side (7.7 % convergent and 89.7 % divergent cases). Elmoazen and Elsherbini (4) used digital photographs to identify palatal rugae, whereas we employed manually delineated study casts. The plausible reason for fewer unification cases in some studies could be because rugae sometimes merge with the rest of the palate on two-dimensional photographs, leaving them undetected.…”

“…While the mean number of rugae in our study ranged between 4.30 to 4.83, most of the authors reported more rugae than this. A study by Elmomozen and Elsherbini in 2017 found a gender variation in the number of palatal rugae where the mean value for females was found to be 8.85 ± 1.41 and 9.38 ± 1.13 in males (4) . The lowest number of rugae was reported by Kim et al among 5-18-year-old patients in Korea, and it ranged from the right side (17) .…”

“…There seems to be a genetic influence on how rugae patterns show sexual dimorphism and ethnic variations. Studies among Australian Aborigines, Saudi Arabians, Egyptians, Indians, Iranian, Yoruba group, and Iraqi population have reported the applicability of palatal rugae in identifying sex and population differences (3)(4)(5)(6)(7) . At the same time, many disagree that palatal rugae detect sexual dimorphism (8)(9)(10) .…”