British Journal ofOphthalmology, 1982, 66, 742 Correspondence

butterfly-shaped pigment alterations SIR, I read with interest Gutman et al.'s article ' on vitelliform macular dystrophy (VMD) in the right eye and butterfly-shaped epithelial dystrophy (BED) in the left eye of a 22-year-old female. They suggested that these were both expressions ofone and the same disease. They referred to the concept of 'patterned ' or 'pattern ' dystrophies of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) by Hsieh et al.2 and Marmor and Byers, ' in which publications reticular pigment alterations, butterfly-shaped and granular pigmentations occurred in 2 families on a presumed autosomal dominantly inherited manner. These last 2 publications did not mention the simultaneous occurrence of VMD and BED in one family, or even any similarity, as is erroneously stated by the authors