The management of the painful bipartite patella: a systematic review

Purpose: This study aimed to identify the most effective method for the treatment of the symptomatic bipartite patella. Methods: A systematic review of the literature was completed, and all studies assessing the management of a bipartite patella were included. Owing to the paucity of randomised controlled trials, a narrative review of 22 studies was completed. A range of treatments were assessed: conservative measures, open and arthroscopic fixation or excision and soft tissue release and excision. Results: All of the methods provided results ranging from good to excellent, with acceptable complication rates. Conclusions: This is a poorly answered treatment question. No firm guidance can be given as to the most appropriate method of treating the symptomatic bipartite patella. This study suggests that there are a number of effective treatments with acceptable complication rates and it may be that treatments that conserve the patella are more appropriate for larger fragments

Towards in-jet resonance ionization spectroscopy : An injection-locked Titanium:Sapphire laser system for the PALIS-facility

This article presents a pulsed narrowband injection-locked Titanium:Sapphire laser aimed for high-resolution in-jet resonance ionization spectroscopy at the SLOWRI/PALIS at RIKEN. The laser has been integrated into the PALIS laser laboratory enabling it to be utilized with the existing broadband Titanium:Sapphire and dye lasers. The seed efficiency has been evaluated to be close to unity over the master laser wavelength range ∼ 753 to 791 nm, and the slope efficiency, namely the ratio of the pump power to the output power, was determined to be ∼ 30 % at 780 nm. A two-step ionization scheme with 386.4016 nm first step and 286.731 nm second step into an autoionizing state was developed for resonance ionization spectroscopy of 93Nb. Magnetic hyperfine coupling constants of 1866 ± 8 MHz and 1536 ± 7 MHz were measured for the ground and excited state, respectively, in a good agreement with the literature values. A Gaussian dominated Voigt linewidth of 434.5 ± 7.4 MHz was extracted from the hyperfine spectra measured for niobium. In addition, the resolution of the in-jet resonance ionization in PALIS is estimated through numerical methods.peerReviewe