Acute Oxygen Therapy and Cognitive and Driving Performance in Hypoxaemic COPD.

Testing was performed whilst the patient received intranasal oxygen or intranasal air delivered in a double-blinded, randomized crossover manner to enable appropriate study control and minimize bias. I was unable to demonstrate any differences between any of the driving performance measurements, nor or in any of the neurocognitive (PVT) measurements indicating that acute oxygen therapy provides no measurable benefit over breathing medical air. Furthermore, no relationships could be found between driving or neurocognitive performance and baseline characteristics. This implies that it is not possible to predict those individualslikely to benefit most from oxygen therapy from a neurocognitive perspective. The conclusions from these findings are that acute oxygen therapy does not improve simulated driving performance or neurocognition in hypoxaemic COPD. These data do not support the recommendation that oxygen should be used whilst driving in this patient group and the recommendations should be altered to reflect these findings.