Driving in Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Objective: To determine if the impaired mental skills in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) may adversely affect driving ability.

Design: Retrospective survey.

Setting: The Alzheimer's Clinic of the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Patients: We interviewed 67 AD patients and their families and compared them with 100 elderly, non-spousal controls.

Measures: The questionnaire was designed to obtain information on their driving habits, with emphasis placed on whether they were still driving, and the number of accidents per year for the past 10 years.

Results: Forty-six of the AD subjects had stopped driving because of safety concerns expressed by the subjects, their families, or health care providers, and two had stopped for other reasons. Only two of the normal controls had stopped driving (P < 0.0001, Chi-square test). Over the past 3 years, the 19 AD subjects who were still driving had 263.2 motor vehicle accidents per million vehicle miles of travel compared with 14.3 for the controls (P < 0.002, Mann-Whitney U test) and 5.7 for the general driving population age > or = 55 years (P < 0.05, Students one group, two-tailed t test).

Conclusion: This study suggests that a significant traffic safety problem exists in subjects with AD who continue to drive. Efforts should be directed to detect patients with AD whose driving presents a traffic safety problem.