REPRODUCIBILITY OF THE LASER FLARE METER AND LASER CELL COUNTER IN ASSESSING ANTERIOR-CHAMBER INFLAMMATION FOLLOWING CATARACT-SURGERY

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: To determine the interobserver and intraobs erver reproducibility of the laser flare meter and laser cell counter in assessing anterior chamber inflammation following cataract surgery. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Thirty-nine eyes with varied degrees of inflamm ation and 9 normal eyes were included in the study. Anterior chamber f lare and cells were evaluated with the slit lamp and graded on a scale of 0 to 4+. The flare and cells were then measured three times each u sing the flare meter and cell counter by two different, experienced ob servers. The intraobserver reproducibilities were computed to evaluate repeatability of the instruments operated by the same observer. The f irst measurement taken by each observer was used to assess reproducibi lity between the two observers. RESULTS: The intraobserver reproducibi lity for overall flare was 0.995 for both observers. The intraobserver reproducibility for overall cells was 0.996 for observer 1 and 0.991 for observer 2. The overall interobserver reproducibility was 0.994 fo r flare and 0.988 for cells. The correlation between measurements and slit-lamp ratings was 0.78 for flare and 0.56 for cells. CONCLUSIONS: The intraobserver and interobserver reproducibilities were excellent, with good correlation to slit-lamp measurements. Reproducible results can be obtained using the laser flare meter and the laser cell counter . It is not known whether these results are applicable to other inflam matory processes with higher grades of flare and cells and with differ ent protein and cell types.