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Subtalar (peritalar) dislocation is an uncommon injury of the foot in which the subtalar and the talonavicular joints are dislocated simultaneously. 1-7,10-16 Its incidence has been estimated to be approximately 1% of all dislocations 7,12,14 and fewer than 2% of all major joint dislocations.4 Most often, the foot is dislocated medially to the talus, although lateral, anterior, and posterior dislocations can also occur. 16 The patient in this report sustained the medial type of this injury twice in the same foot. CASE REPORTA 20-year-old male patient injured his right foot while playing basketball. Examination in our accident unit revealed an inversion deformity of this foot. Roentgenograms taken before any attempt for reduction showed a medial subtalar and talonavicular dislocation without fracture (Fig. 1). Under general anesthesia, reduction of the dislocation was attempted. The success of the manipulations was confirmed by roentgenogram taken after the application of a short leg cast (Fig. 2). The extremity was immobilized for 8 weeks. From the 5th week and with the use of a removable back slab, active exercises were begun and full weightbearing was allowed 10 weeks after the reduction. At follow-up examination 6 months later, the patient had almost normal range of motion of the subtalar joint and had no pain in the foot. He returned gradually to his previous athletic activities and played professional basketball without any problem in his foot.Five years later, he again twisted his right ankle while playing basketball and sustained a similar closed injury. New roentgenograms revealed a subtalar dislocation almost identical to the first one (Fig. 3). Reduction was obtained again by manipulations under general anesthesia. As with the first injury, the leg was immobilized in a short leg cast (Fig. 4) for 8 weeks, but the active and passive Figure 1. Roentgenograms (A and B) of the right foot after the first injury, revealing a subtalar dislocation.exercises were started only after the final removal of the cast. Full weightbearing was allowed 3 months after the reduction. At followup 12 months later, the patient did not complain of any pain in the foot; however, at that time significant limitation of the range of motion of the subtalar joint was noted. Despite this stiffness, he was able to return successfully to top-level basketball.

The ability to manipulate the size and depth of poling inhibited domains, which are produced by UV laser irradiation of the +z face of lithium niobate crystals followed by electric field poling, is demonstrated. It is shown that complex domain structures, much wider than the irradiating laser spot, can be obtained by partially overlapping the subsequent UV laser irradiated tracks. The result of this stitching process is one uniform domain without any remaining trace of its constituent components thus increasing dramatically the utility of this method for the fabrication of surface microstructures as well as periodic and aperiodic domain lattices for nonlinear optical and surface acoustic wave applications. Finally, the impact of multi exposure on the domain characteristics is also investigated indicating that some control over the domain depth can be attained.

In this work, we consider White Light Reflectance Spectroscopy (WLRS) as an optical methodology for the accurate, fast and non-destructive measurement of film thickness in the 1 nm to the 1 mm range and for applications that include microelectronics, photonics, bioanalysis and packaging. Films to which WLRS is applicable can be either homogeneous or layered-composite ones, while thickness and composition might be fixed or varying with time; in the latter case, real-time monitoring of the kinetics of processes such as certain transitions, film dissolution and bioreactions is possible. We present the basic principles of WLRS and a selection of characteristic application examples of current interest, and we also briefly compare WLRS with alternative methods for film measurement.