A high-fidelity simulator that allows people to practice driving on a computer-generated course can help stroke patients learn to drive again, researchers have found.
Patients who received simulator training were also almost twice as likely as stroke patients without the training to pass an official driving test at the end of a five-week training period, according to Dr. Abiodun Akinwuntan, a Medical College of Georgia physical therapy instructor and the lead researcher on the study published in the Sept. 27 issue of Neurology.
"Traditionally, to help patients learn to drive again, therapists have relied on conventional methods like paper-and-pencil-based training and sometimes an on-road training method," Dr. Akinwuntan says. "I have never been a proponent of the on-road method because it can be unsafe. Healthy drivers find the roads dangerous enough."
In 2003, Dr. Akinwuntan and his colleagues at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium, the Belgian Road Safety Institute in Brussels and University Hospital in Pellenberg, Belgium, studied 83 stroke patients in the rehabilitation unit of the hospital. Using a 20-mile computer-simulated course that Dr. Akinwuntan developed, patients practiced driving in a variety of traffic situations. Virtual rural and open roads, urban settings and highways each tested a different skill level.
"Rural, small roads have less traffic and test basic skills," he says. "The urban setting has more traffic and can test how well patients perform when their attention is divided among many distractions, and the highway setting gives an idea whether they understand what it means to overtake another car – can they effectively react to other drivers and their maneuvers."