Method of Assessment of Driving Ability in Patients Suffering From Wakefulness Pathologies

Excessive daytime sleepiness is responsible of 20% of traffic accidents and 2/3 of truck accidents on French Freeways. Since the publication of a new law (arrêté du 28 décembre 2005 du journal officiel) regulating fitness to drive, the Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) is now mandatory to evaluate driving skills of patients suffering of excessive daytime sleepiness. The MWT has shown a good predictability of driving handicap on simulators in patients suffering from obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. Nevertheless no study has proven yet the predictability of the MWT regarding real and simulated driving in narcoleptics and hypersomniacs. Furthermore, even if alerting drugs significantly improve MWT scores there is no data available concerning the impact of these drugs on fitness to drive. This lack of knowledge is a major handicap to evaluate driving skills of treated patients suffering from excessive daytime sleepiness. The main objective of our project is to test the predictive value of the MWT on real and simulated driving performances in untreated and treated sleepy patients suffering from narcolepsy and hypersomnia. Inclusion of healthy volunteers will allow to collect reference data about somnolence during MWT.