Session Information
Date: Monday, June 5, 2017
Session Title: Quality Of Life/Caregiver Burden in Movement Disorders
Session Time: 1:45pm-3:15pm
Location: Exhibit Hall C
Objective: To determine the incidence of and risk factors for car accidents in drivers with Parkinson’s disease (PD).
Background: Few studies have addressed traffic accident proneness in patients with PD in Japan.
Methods: We sent an anonymous questionnaire including driving behavior, treatment, Japanese version of PDQ-39 and Japanese version of Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) score in September, 2015 to 1,417 PD patients who received medical care certificates for Intractable Diseases in 2014 from Aomori Prefectural Government. The population of Aomori Prefecture is approximately 1.3 million. We analyzed the questionnaire data mailed back until the end of 2015.
Results: Complete data sets were obtained from 625 PD patients. Of those, 199 patients had not acquired a driving license, 197 patients had surrendered a driving license, and 229 patients had a driving license. Those having retired from driving had a more advanced (subjective) disease severity, higher age and a longer disease duration when compared to patients holding a license. Of the patients holding a driving license, 14% (33 patients) had caused at lease one car accident during the past five years. 22 PD patients caused sleep-unrelated car accidents, whereas 11 patients caused accidents due to falling asleep at the wheel. Patients with sleep-unrelated accidents were significantly older than patients without accidents and patients with sleep-related accidents. Multivariable analysis revealed that total traffic accidents were related to ergot dopamine agonist treatment and a high score of ESS. Sleep-unrelated traffic accidents in PD were relevant to ergot dopamine agonist treatment and higher age, whereas sleep-related traffic accidents in PD were associated with an increased score of ESS.
Conclusions: These results suggest that PD patients with sleep-related and sleep-unrelated car accidents have different risk factors. Daytime sleepiness appears to be a predictable factor for accidents due to falling asleep at the wheel. It was of particular interest that ergot agonists were more frequently prescribed in PD patients with sleep-unrelated accidents.
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
M. Tomiyama, T. Ueno, H. Nishijima, T. Kon, R. Haga, Y. Funamizu, A. Arai, C. Suzuki, J. Nunomura, M. Baba. Driving license and car accidents in patients with Parkinson’s disease [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2017; 32 (suppl 2). https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/driving-license-and-car-accidents-in-patients-with-parkinsons-disease/. Accessed June 14, 2025.« Back to 2017 International Congress
MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/driving-license-and-car-accidents-in-patients-with-parkinsons-disease/