Morphological investigation of cranial sutures in Indian human adult skulls

The goal of the study was to evaluate the gross morphology of the coronal, sagittal and lambdoid sutures in human adult dried skulls and to determine if any difference exists in terms of patency. The study included 78 human dry skulls of Indian population. The coronal, sagittal and lambdoid sutures were analyzed using the modified grading scale (Sabini RC and Elkowitz DE, 2006) for quantifying the sutural patency. An open suture was graded as 0, a fused suture as 1 and an obliterated suture as 2, 3 or 4, depending on the extent of obliteration. In coronal suture, the grade 1 suture was seen in 3.9%, grade 2 in 55.1%, grade 3 in 33.3%, and grade 4 in 7.7% of the cases. The sagittal sutures had grade 1 in 2.6%, grade 2 in 46.1%, grade 3 in 37.2%, and grade 4 in 14.1% of the cases. In contrast, the lambdoid suture showed 23.1% grade 1, 55.1% grade 2, 16.7% grade 3, and 5.1% grade 4 sutures. The grade 0 suture morphology was not observed in any of the skulls. When compared with the coronal and sagittal sutures, the lambdoid suture was more likely to be patent. The prolonged patency of the lambdoid suture may be due to external forces acting on it. The greater number of muscles acting on the lambdoid suture compared to coronal and sagittal sutures may be considered as the cause. We believe that, these findings may be helpful to the researchers who are interested in biomedical science and osteopathic manipulative medicine. The findings are also enlightening for the neuroscientists, morphologists, anthropologists and clinicians.