Some professional traders do in fact use patterns. I've visited several institutional firms and have a few close personal friends and a relative that are institutional traders...they do use patterns but its not the only thing they use nor is it the primary thing they use.
Yet, the fact is that they do use patterns but not with emphasis on such as the way typical retail trader uses them.
One of my best friends from college works for BNP Paribas in London...he has 8 monitors at his desk and one of those monitors is just for charts (bonds and stuff)...he uses patterns but its not the only thing he uses and many other things he uses is more important than chart patterns.
I find it funny here at ET that the stuff the Professional traders use (I'm not talking about patterns) is typically ignored by the retail trader or debated by the typical retail trader as of having no value or little value.