Ion Beratis, Nikolaos Andronas, Alexandra Economou, Dimosthenis Pavlou, Athanasia Liozidou, Rubina Antonellou, George Yannis, Leonidas Stefanis, Sokratis Papageorgiou
Introduction: The Trail Making test (TMT) has been identified in several studies as predictor of driving skills in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). Objective of the present work is to assess the capacity of an alternative version of the TMT, namely of the Comprehensive Trail Making test (CTMT; Reynolds, 2002) to serve as predictor of driving fitness in patients with PD. Methods: Inclusion criteria were the presence of a valid driver’s license, regular car driving, a score equal to or less than 0.5 on the CDR, and a score between 1 and 3 in the scale of Hoehn & Yahr. A total of 11 patients with PD were introduced in the study. The collection of the data included: (a) a clinical medical and neurological assessment, (b) extensive neuropsychological assessment, and (c) a driving simulation experiment. Results: Very high correlations of certain subtests of the CTMT were observed with the average speed and speed variation that surpassed the correlations obtained with the classical TMT. Indicatively, CTMT-4 explained 82.3 % of the variance in average speed [R² =.823, F(1,9)=37.29, p<.001] and 82.8 % of the variance in speed variation [R² =.828, F(1,9)=38.38, p<.001]. Additionally, two subtests of the CTMT were significantly correlated with reaction time of the driver in unexpected incidents, while the classical TMT subtests did not. Conclusion: Preliminaryfindings underline the role of executive abilities in various measures of driving performance and support the usefulness of CTMT in the investigation of driving capacity in drivers with PD.
Joint Congress of European Neurology, Istanbul, 2014
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