When Can I Drive After Orthopaedic Surgery? A Systematic Review.

CONCLUSIONS: The available evidence provides a best-case scenario for when patients can return to driving. It is important for observer-reported outcome measures to have normalized before a patient can consider driving, but other factors such as strength, ROM, and use of opioid analgesics need to be considered. This review can provide a guideline for when physicians can begin to consider evaluating these other factors and discussing a return to driving with patients. Survey data suggest that patients are returning to driving before observer-reported outcome measures have normalized, indicating that physicians should tell patients to wait longer before driving. Further research is needed to correlate observer-reported outcome measures with adverse events, such as motor vehicle accidents, and clinical tests that can be performed in the office. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level III, therapeutic study. PMID: 27492688 [PubMed - in process]
Source: Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research - Category: Orthopaedics Authors: Tags: Clin Orthop Relat Res Source Type: research