[Empirical studies of automobile driving fitness of patients treated with methadone-substitution]

Abstract

The aim of this experimental study was to gain an impression on the driver fitness of heroin addicts which were at the moment substituted by methadone especially within a methadone program sponsored by the government of NRW. 21 out of 34 patients investigated were unfit to drive because they were at the time the tests were conducted under the effect of at least one additional psychotropic substance other than methadone or because at prior blood tests within 3 months they had been found at least twice under the effect of psychotropic drugs or they were known as concomitant drug users. The remaining 13 methadone patients were matched with 13 control subjects of the same sex, education and-within a range of +/- 2 years-also the same age. Testing short term memory, tracking, decision and reaction behavior, perception, sustained attention, speed estimation, peripheral attention with simultaneous central task, reactive loading, personality questionnaires including traffic specific questions and psychopathologic characteristics the patients yielded significant poorer results compared with the control group. When selecting 6 very good patients according to the decision of the physicians the significant differences concerning performance measures vanished but some differences concerning personality traits still remained. The results confirm the expert's opinion-called "disease and motor traffic"-that in general methadone substituted patients are unfit to drive. The driver fitness of the very few optimal patients depends on the amount of the personality disorders.