Mild Cognitive Impairment and Driving Cessation: A 3-Year Longitudinal Study.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Driving cessation is associated with significant morbidity in older people. People with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) may be at particular risk of this. Very little research has examined driving in this population. Given this, we sought to identify predictors of driving cessation in people with MCI.

METHODS: One hundred and eighty-five people with MCI were recruited from 9 memory clinics around Australia. People with MCI and their carers reported their driving status and completed measures of cognition, function, neuropsychiatric symptoms, and medication use at regular intervals over a 3-year period.

RESULTS: Of the 144 people still driving at baseline, 50 (27.0%) stopped driving during the study. Older age, greater cognitive and functional impairment, and greater decline in cognition and function at 6 months predicted subsequent driving cessation. Twenty-nine of the 50 people (58%) who stopped driving were diagnosed with dementia during the study; all except one of whom ceased driving after their dementia diagnosis.

CONCLUSION: A significant proportion of people diagnosed with MCI stop driving over the following 3 years. This cannot be entirely attributed to developing dementia. Easily assessable characteristics - such as age, cognition, and function - and changes in these measures over 6 months predict driving cessation.