Abstracts

Rationale: Road Traffic Accident (RTA) is one of the leading non-medical causes of death in Oman. Epileptic patients who are driving are at higher risk of having RTA compare to general population. There are laws governing driving in epileptic patients to protect the patients and the general public. These laws are not uniform across the countries. Most of these laws depend on the duration of seizure free interval as well as treating physician opinion. However, driving is quite important in our daily life especially in places where the public transport is not well developed. Therefore, patients’ compliance to the law may be questioned. To our knowledge there are no specific laws in Oman addressing this issue. The aim of this study was to assess the attitude of Omani epileptic patients towards driving and the laws governing epilepsy and driving. Their attitude were compared with non-epileptic Omani population. Methods: Epileptic group in the driving age attended our Neurology Clinic over the last one year who were deemed mentally competent and physically able to drive were interviewed by phone using a standard questionnaire. The questionnaire was also administered to a control group chosen from visitor of our institute to match the epileptic group by age and gender. At the beginning of the interview a verbal consent to carry the interview was taken from all the subjects who are eligible for the study. The ethic committee of our institute approved the study. Results: 72 patients were interviewed of which 67% were male. Matched age and gender healthy subjects were also interviewed. Most our epileptic patients sampled have their attacks at least once a year during which the attack was associated with alteration of consciousness. 50% of the patients do not drive compare to only 5% in the control group. Of those 36% did not drive due to their illness. None of the sampled group was aware of any rules governing driving and epilepsy locally or internationally. However, 30% in the control group thought epileptic patients should not allowed to drive compare to 13% in the epileptic group. To our surprise, only 30% of the sampled patients were counselled regarding the risk of driving. The control group thought that the physicians should report to the licensing authority regarding their patients’ compare to epileptic group (85 vs. 60%). Conclusions: General public and epileptic patients sampled are not aware of the rules governing epilepsy and driving either locally or internationally. We found that 50% of the sampled patients who are at high risk do drive. In addition, the majority of the patients were not counselled by their treating physicians about the risk of driving in epilepsy. Our study calls for urgent formulation of a law governing this issue in collaboration with health professional managing epileptic patients. Physicians dealing with such patients must be aware of such laws and mandate to counsel their patients and documents these in their medical records.