Driving while Demented-new guidelines
The American Academy of Neurology has issued a new guideline to help determine when people with Alzheimer’s disease or another type of dementia should stop driving. The guideline is published in the April 12, 2010, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
People with dementia can safely drive for some time, but almost all will eventually have to give up driving. It’s not safe for the driver or for others on the road.
The guideline recommends doctors use the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scale to identify people with dementia at an increased risk of unsafe driving. The CDR provides a tool for clinicians to integrate information from caregivers and from direct examination of the patient to develop a comprehensive view of the dementia severity.
If you are a caregiver for someone with dementia, trust your evaluation.
The guidelines found that caregivers who rate a patient’s driving as “marginal” or “unsafe” were often proven correct when the patient took an on-road driving test. On the other hand, patients who deemed their own driving as “safe” were not necessarily accurate in their own assessments.
