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Driving Made More Dangerous by Parkinson Disease

People with only mild-to-moderate Parkinson disease (PD) made more driving mistakes than other drivers in a study of on-road driving published in the current Neurology.

Both groups' average age was in the mid-60s, and all participants were active drivers. Compared with healthy people, patients with PD made more "at-fault" driving errors, such as lane deviations and excessive acceleration or deceleration, during both simple driving and driving while completing a verbal mathematical (distraction) task. A significantly larger subset of patients in the PD group had worsening of their driving with distraction compared with controls.

PD patients' driving performance correlated with performance on baseline tests of cognitive flexibility, memory, visual perception, postural control, and daytime sleepiness.

Link: Neurology article (Free abstract; full text requires subscription)

Link: AMA guide to assessing older drivers (Free PDF)

Published in Physician's First Watch November 28, 2006

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