Can patients receiving opioid maintenance therapy safely drive? A systematic review of epidemiological and experimental studies on driving ability with a focus on concomitant methadone or buprenorphine administration.

Conclusions: Both methadone and buprenorphine were confirmed as having impairing potentials in opioid-naïve subjects. At least some opioid maintenance therapy patients are observed having only slight impairments of relevance to driving. Knowing this when approaching the question of ability to drive, an individual evaluation of the driving performance, pertaining to the opioid maintained patient, may be the most useful and conclusive procedure. Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Traffic Injury Prevention to view the supplemental file. PMID: 23259516 [PubMed - in process]
Source: Traffic Injury Prevention - Category: Occupational Health Authors: Tags: Traffic Inj Prev Source Type: research