Importance: Syncope may have serious consequences for traffic safety. Current clinical guideline recommendations on driving following syncope are primarily based on expert consensus.

Objective: To identify whether there is excess risk of motor vehicle crashes among patients with syncope compared with the general population.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Danish nationwide cohort study from January 1, 2008, to December 31, 2012. Through individual-level linkage of nationwide administrative registers, all Danish residents 18 years or older were identified. Of 4 265 301 eligible Danish residents, we identified 41 039 individuals with a first-time diagnosis of syncope from emergency department or hospital.

Main Outcomes And Measures: Rate of motor vehicle crashes (including nonfatal and fatal crashes), based on multivariate Poisson regression models, using the total Danish population as reference.

Results: The 41 039 patients with syncope had a median age of 66 years (interquartile range [IQR], 47-78 years); 51.0% were women; and 34.8% had cardiovascular disease. Through a median follow-up of 2.0 years (IQR, 0.8-3.3 years), 1791 patients with syncope (4.4%) had a motor vehicle crash, 78.1% of which led to injury (n = 1398) and 0.3% to death (n = 6). The crude incidence rate of motor vehicle crashes was almost doubled among patients with syncope (20.6 per 1000 person-years; 95% CI, 19.7-21.6) compared with the general population (12.1; 95% CI, 12.0-12.1), with a rate ratio (RR) of 1.83 (95% CI, 1.74-1.91) after adjustment for age, sex, socioeconomic position, and relevant comorbidities and pharmacotherapy. Men had a relatively higher rate of motor vehicle crashes (RR, 1.91; 95% CI, 1.79-2.03) than women (RR, 1.74; 95% CI, 1.63-1.87). The excess risk of motor vehicle crashes persisted throughout the follow-up period. The 5-year crash risk following syncope was 8.2% (95% CI, 7.5%-8.8%) among the population aged 18 to 69 years compared with 5.1% (95% CI, 4.7%-5.4%) in the general population.

Conclusions And Relevance: Prior hospitalization for syncope was associated with increased risk of motor vehicle crashes throughout the follow-up period. This study suggests that syncope should be considered as one of several factors in a broad assessment of fitness to drive.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.8606DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

motor vehicle
32
vehicle crashes
24
patients syncope
16
risk motor
12
rate motor
12
syncope
11
vehicle
8
vehicle crash
8
crash risk
8
danish nationwide
8

Similar Publications

Background: Road-related injuries and deaths are among the most significant and avoidable public health problems in Canada. Modifications to the built environment (BE) can reduce injury rates for vulnerable road users (VRUs) and other priority populations who experience disproportionate risk. This paper highlights public health professionals' experiences working in injury prevention across Ontario public health units (PHUs) navigating barriers and facilitators to BE change.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Through the mobilization of movable objects due to the extreme hydraulic conditions during a flood event, blockages, damage to infrastructure, and endangerment of human lives can occur. To identify potential hazards from aerial imagery and take appropriate precautions, a change detection tool (CDT) was developed and tested using a study area along the Aisch River in Germany. The focus of the CDT development was on near real-time analysis of point cloud data generated by structure from motion from aerial images of temporally separated surveys, enabling rapid and targeted implementation of measures.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Previous research on pediatric motor vehicle collisions (MVC) and fatalities has primarily focused on patient demographics and crash specific information. This study evaluates whether various measures of local infrastructure, including the National Walk Index (NWI), population density, and public school density, or macroeconomic forces, encapsulated in Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) and food area deprivation (PFA) can predict which counties are most at risk for pediatric traffic fatalities.

Methods: Counties with more than 100,000 children in the most recent US census and ≥1 pediatric traffic fatality as identified in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) between 2017 and 2021 were included in the study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The rapid development of Internet of Things technology has promoted the popularization of Internet of Vehicles, and its safety and reliability have become the focus of intelligent transportation system research. Vehicle-road collaboration relies on the collaborative computing and storage resources of the vehicle on-board unit (OBU), which are usually limited. When the vehicle in the edge area needs to do computing tasks such as intelligent driving, but its own computing resources are insufficient.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Enhancing the performance of 5ph-IPMSM control plays a crucial role in advancing various innovative applications such as electric vehicles. This paper proposes a new reinforcement learning (RL) control algorithm based twin-delayed deep deterministic policy gradient (TD3) algorithm to tune two cascaded PI controllers in a five-phase interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (5ph-IPMSM) drive system based model predictive control (MPC). The main purpose of the control methodology is to optimize the 5ph-IPMSM speed response either in constant torque region or constant power region.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!