Assessment of Stature from Hand Span - A Cross Sectional Descriptive Investigation among Undergraduate Medical Students

Abstract

BACKGROUND Hand size measurements are commonly used references when instruments are not available and still practiced in rural and even in urban areas of Tamil Nadu. Ancient literature evidences have adequate support for their usage. We wanted to correlate hand span length, hand breadth, and hand length with the stature of an individual. We also wanted to compare the level of correlation of hand span length between males and females. METHODS 214 students were recruited for this study as a convenient sample size. Male students were 122, females were 92. They were aged between 18 - 23 years of Shri Sathya Sai Medical College and Research Institute. Hand span is the distance between tips of the casually extended pollex and minimus. RESULTS The results of Pearson’s correlations were moderately significant between height and the hand breadth (0.315), between height and weight (0.340), and between height and hand length (0.387). The extent of correlation was significant between height and the hand span (0.954) in case of males. In case of females, value of the correlation was also moderately significant between height and the hand breadth (0.619), between height and weight (0.392), between height and hand length (0.515) and between height and the hand span (0.973). CONCLUSIONS The stature was reliably estimated from the hand span length, and the same could be applied for the medicolegal, and forensic purposes. KEY WORDS Hand Span, Stature, Medico Legal, Anthropometry