Driving in Parkinson’s Disease
Betül Özdilek1, Ergun Uç2
1Erenkoy Research and Training Hospital for Neurologic and Psychiatric Disorders, Department of Neurology, Istanbul, Turkey
2Department Of Neurology, Carver College Of Medicine, University Of Iowa, Iowa City, USA
Keywords: Parkinson’s disease, driving, driving tests
Abstract
Even though drivers with Parkinson’s disease (PD) are considered at higher for accidents due to associated visual, cognitive impairments as well as sleeping and movement disorders, no epidemiologic relationship between PD and accidents has been established. However, drivers with PD have been found to cease driving earlier than healthy controls of similar age. The medical diagnosis or the physician’s evaluation alone is not enough to decide driving fitness in drivers with PD. Evaluation of movement, cognitive and visual skills and traffic and driving simulation tests help to assess driving performance, however there are no well-established and standardized methods and guidelines to determine driver fitness in PD in Turkey or worldwide.
Components of driving skills and evaluation of driving performance in PD along with the description of the status of driving research and assessments in Turkey and proposals to advance driving assessment in Turkey will be discussed in our manuscript. Developing a standardized evaluation methods and a multidisciplinary decision process for the patients with a neurodegenerative disease is very important to maintain their safe vehicular mobility for a long time.