[The driving simulation test "carsim" for assessing vigilance. Effect of driving practice and other factors in health subjects and in patients with sleep apnea syndrome].

Among other factors, obstructive sleep apnoea (OSAS) patients suffer from impaired continuous attention. For registration and objectification as well as observation of the course of therapy, driving simulation programmes are particularly suitable. "Carsim", a driving simulation newly developed by us, simulates a bendy road via a screen where a vehicle is supposed to be kept on the right lane by operating a steering wheel. Apart from examination of quality criteria (objectivity, reliability, validity) and establishment of standard values, the influence of significant variables (age, gender, school education, profession, duration of disorder, AHI, BMI, visual and motor functionability, driving license, driving experience, Epworth score, accident frequency) on patients and healthy controls requires to be evaluated. For this purpose, 100 healthy controls, 200 OSAS patients and 30 patients under nCPAP were analysed. In healthy persons and patients under nCPAP, driving experience had no impact on the driving simulation results. OSAS patients with no driving license and no driving experience achieved lower marks for tracking than patients with driving license or a lot of driving experience (no driving license: x = 8058 +/- 10,878 track deviations; with driving licence: x = 2111 +/- 6564 track deviations; p < .001). According to our findings, untreated OSAS severely interferes with patients' attention capacity as well as their coping strategies.