To drive or not to drive (after TBI)? A review of the literature and its implications for rehabilitation and future research
Titel:
To drive or not to drive (after TBI)? A review of the literature and its implications for rehabilitation and future research
Auteur:
Tamietto, Marco Torrini, Gaia Adenzato, Mauro Pietrapiana, Paolo Rago, Roberto Perino, Claudio
Verschenen in:
NeuroRehabilitation
Paginering:
Jaargang 21 (2006) nr. 1 pagina's 81-92
Jaar:
2006-05-17
Inhoud:
Development of reliable procedures to assess fitness to safe driving after traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a crucial step in rehabilitation. However, prior studies are highly inconsistent in the choice of measures recommended for predicting driving fitness from different pre-driving measures. In the present paper the relevant literature is reviewed with the aim of shedding light on the reasons for these inconsistencies. The discrepant results reflect investigative choices which differ in five aspects: (1) the type of predictors used as pre-driving screening; (2) the type of measures considered as the criterion for the determination of fitness to drive after TBI; (3) the severity of the TBI in the sample of patients studied; (4) the extent of the neural structures damaged by TBI and the overlap of these areas with those involved in driving tasks; (5) the length of the follow-up considered. The strengths and weaknesses of the different methods and measures are discussed with their implications for future research and clinical rehabilitation. Encouraging findings come from recent studies that combined together medical, psychosocial, and personality measures, thereby improving the explanatory power of the predictors used. The use of post-injury driving fitness measures with great ecological and external validity seems equally promising in assessing actual driving in the real world.