Investigation of wormian bone incidence in adult Turkish society in dry skulls

Abstract

The most common type of joint between the skull bones is suture joints, which is one of the fibrous joints.During the articulation process, additional ossification centers are formed in or around the sutures. Sutural bones formed from these ossification centers are called wormian bones. Wormian bones are often observed around the sutura lambdoidea. The wormian bone seen in the middle of the sutura lambdoidea is called the Inca bone or os interparietale. These bones can sometimes be mistaken for fractures in head injuries. The aim of our study is to investigate the incidence of wormian bone and to contribute literature to studies in fields such as craniofacial surgery, forensic medicine and anthropology.Our research was carried out on one hundred human skulls of unknown gender in the Anatomy Laboratory of Akdeniz University Faculty of Medicine. The research was repeated three times with two independent observers, with observational control.Wormian bone was seen in twenty-three of the hundred dry skulls. Five of them had only Inca bones. Six of them contained small Wormian bones within the sutura lambdoidea, along with the Inca bone. In the remaining twelve, Wormian bone was observed only within the sutura lambdoidea. The gender of the skulls observed in our study is unknown. In terms of tooth eruption, all were accepted as adult skulls. In the future, performing radiological studies that are gender-determined and categorized according to age groups will contribute to incidence studies in this area.The findings of our study showed that the incidence of wormian bones is high in Turkish population. For this reason, it is important to know this variation when evaluating the radiographs of patients exposed to head trauma in emergency services.