Clinical evaluation of the Lotmar Visometer for macula testing in cataract patients.

This study is an independent clinical evaluation of the 'Lotmar Visometer', an achromatic interferometer that uses moiré fringes with variable pitch making quantitative assessment of macular function possible. Light source is a normal low-voltage lamp. We evaluated this instrument's ability to predict post-operative visual acuity in 90 consecutive cataract patients. 27% could not see the fringes. Among the rest of the patients the correlation between the instrument's prediction and post-operative visual acuity was generally poor. When used semiquantitatively or qualitatively, the visometer, however, can provide useful information of the macular function in some patients.