sessed accident risk factors in 2,342 respondents who were Australian commercial truck drivers. In addition, another 161 from a group of selected professional truck drivers underwent a polysomnographic sleep test. According to the investigators, about 60 percent of the drivers had sleep-disordered breathing and 16 percent had obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. Those figures contrasted sharply with data associated with the normal civilian population that showed a 24 percent sleep-disordered breathing rate and a 4 percent sleep apnea level. (For the study, sleep-disordered breathing was defined as 5 temporary pauses (apneas) or more in breathing per hour during sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea was characterized as 5 breathing pauses or more per hour, plus a high Epworth Sleepiness Scale score.) In addition to the accident problems shown by the drivers who suffered from increased sleepiness as demonstrated by the index, the authors saw an increased accident risk through narcotic analgesic and antihistamine use. These substances were used by 4 percent of the drivers. Of the 2,342 respondents who answered the study questionnaire, 739 drivers (35.5 percent) had a total of 1,407 accidents in the prior 3 years, with almost half of these truckers (48.3 percent) having had more than one accident. The study appears in the first issue for November 2004 of the American Thoracic Society's peer-reviewed American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

HUGE STUDY REVEALS CRITICAL CARE USE IN SERIOUS ILLNESS

In results from a huge study of Medicare patients who were seriously ill, researchers found that use of critical care was less likely the older an individual got; yet, regardless of age, about 3 percent of the patients who repeatedly entered intensive care accounted for 23 percent of the hospitalizations, totaling over $3 billion in costs. The investigator analyzed the records of 1,108,060 Medicare benefi
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Contact: Cathy Carlomagno
ccarlomagno@thoracic.org
212-315-6442
American Thoracic Society
1-Nov-2004

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