[Diagnosis of human lifetime height using foot length in forensic medical examination of corpse fragments].

This review of domestic and foreign literature concerns methods for the rough estimation of human height based on the results of foot measurement. The efficiency of all these methods appears to be very low since they yield differing and mostly unreliable information. Their main drawback is attributable to the poor dependence between the foot length and the height. This situation necessitated a new study in the search for more accurate estimates of the anatomic relationship between the two variables. The comprehensive anthropometric examination included a total of 3457 subjects (2073 men and 1384 women). It was shown that the two genders differ in terms of the height-to-foot length ratio; moreover, the mean value of this ratio varies depending on the foot length of individual subjects in the range from 6.2 to 7.1 (for women) and from 6.54 to 7.49 (for men). The length of the foot is negatively correlated with the coefficient describing its relationship to the height; the coefficient decreases with increasing foot length. Also, it may differ at a constant length of the foot within 0.6 and 0.62 in men and women respectively.