Skeletal Trauma Evaluation and its Implications in Forensic Anthropology: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Introduction: To diagnose skeletal trauma is very important to understand the cause and time of death. The proofs obtained from the crime spot would help in the legal procedures. Forensic anthropology plays a substantial role in medico-legal investigations. Forensic anthropology uses a number of tools to evaluate the trauma and varieties of procedures followed to evaluate the skeletal trauma add on to the knowledge of different trauma patterns.

Methods: This systematic review focuses on bridging the research gap and further focus on the future advancements required for more investigations. This review was conducted using the published original article and systematic reviews. The key words used to obtain the articles from different database were ‘skeletal trauma’, ‘trauma analysis’, ‘tool analysis’ and ‘techniques used in skeletal trauma analysis’.

Results: After a thorough literature search, a total of 36 articles were obtained. Only 12 articles were used for the present systematic review as it met the inclusion criteria.

Conclusions: This review further shed the light on the importance, limitations and advancements of different techniques that has a vital role in forensic anthropology. The research gaps were identified that will add upon the precision of medicolegal investigation.