Bicondylar Angle of Femur: An Anthropometric Study in South Indian Population

The femoral bicondylar angle is a characteristic feature of bipedal gait in humans. The bicondylar angle of the femur is the angle between the axis of the shaft of femur and the perpendicular to the transcondylar axis of femur. This article aims to study and document the gender differences in the bicondylar angle of femur in South Indian population. This study also attempts to find the correlation between bicondylar angle, epicondylar breadth and femoral length. The study is done on 110 dry adult bones obtained from the Department of Anatomy, Sri Siddharta Medical college, Tumkur. The bicondylar angle on the right side is 7.26 degrees +/- 1.67 in males and 8.71 degrees +/- 1.58 in females. The bicondylar angle on left side range from 7.39 degrees +/- 1.40 in males and 8.96 degrees +/- 1.49 in females. The difference in the bicondylar angle between males and females is found to be statistically significant on both sides. On the right side, the bicondylar angle shows a moderately negative correlation with the epicondylar breadth and a strong negative correlation with the femoral length. So, larger the bicondylar angle, lesser the epicondylar breadth and femoral length which further supports our inference that females have higher bicondylar angle than men.