Citation

Ghosh D, Jamson SL, Baxter PD, Elliott MW. ERJ Open Res 2015; 1(2): e00074-2015.

Affiliation

Dept of Respiratory Medicine, St James' University Hospital, Leeds, UK.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, European Respiratory Society)

DOI

10.1183/23120541.00074-2015

PMID

27730161

Abstract

Patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) are at increased risk of involvement in road traffic accidents (RTAs) [1]. Clinicians diagnosing OSAS need to advise patients about driving but there are no validated tools and no robust objective data about which factors are important [2]. There are position statements, based solely on expert opinion, from various professional bodies [3–6]. In general, they conclude that a patient with significant daytime sleepiness and a recent RTA or near miss attributable to sleepiness, fatigue or inattention, should be considered a high-risk driver [3–6]. In a recent survey using clinical vignettes, we have shown that there is considerable variability in the advice that patients are likely to receive [7]. This indicates that clinicians require more robust guidance.

We have previously established, using an advanced office personal computer (PC)-based driving simulator (Mini-UoLDS) [8], that it is possible to identify a subgroup of OSAS sufferers who perform significantly worse than others [9]. In contrast to other studies using simpler simulators in which, although patients with OSAS performed worse than controls, both groups still had large numbers of “off-road events” [10–12], 76% of our patients were able to complete nearly an hour of “motorway” driving without incident [9]. Other studies using realistic simulation showed similar results [13]. More advanced PC-based simulators appear to be a credible test of real-life driving and may be useful in understanding what information is useful in assessing accident risk...

Objective data for advising sleep apnoea sufferers whether they are at increased risk of an accident when driving http://ow.ly/TWPgm

Language: en