ISSN: 2572-4916
Getachew Abebe, and Teshal Fikadu, Alehegn Bekele, Lemlem Yilma
Sella turcica varies greatly among normal individuals and its deviation in size and shape is an indication of the pathology of the pituitary and craniofacial abnormality. Knowing the variations gives an important clues in the diagnosis of sellar pathologies and conditions that can affect the skull base. Data in the normal population gives clues in identifying those variations and there are no adequate data in Ethiopia for the morphology of sella turcica. This study aims to describe the morphology and variation of the sella turcica in Southern Ethiopian individuals. Morphometric analysis of the sella turcica was done on randomly selected 311 head Computer Tomography scanned images of individuals who visited Soddo Christian Hospital from September 2018 to August 2019. Measurement was done using the Radiant DICOM viewer. Data was entered to ms- excel 2016 and exported to SPSS version 23 for analysis. Independent-Samples t-test was conducted to compare means and chi-square was used to compare the variation of shape among sexes and one-way ANOVA was applied to compare the means among age groups. Mean length, depth, anteroposterior diameter, area, and volume with their standard deviation were 10.46 mm ± (1.65), 7.27 mm ± (1.26), and 12.22 mm ± (1.78), 90.05 mm2 ± (25.50), and 536.04 mm3± (321.15) respectively. A positive linear correlation was found between the age and length, anteroposterior diameter, area, and volume of the sella turcica. Depth was significantly different among males and females (p-vale < 0.05). 62.2 % of computer tomography scanned sella turcica images were U-shaped, 30.4 % were J-shaped, and 7.4% were shallow. Significant differences in depth were observed between sexes. A great variation in the shape of Sella turcica was observed. Further studies should be done to have an adequate data regarding morphology and variation of Sella turcica.