Scoping Review of Education for Women About Return to Driving After Abdominal Surgery

To conduct a scoping review to examine the evidence on education provided to women about when to return to driving after abdominal surgery and to assess variation in this education by type of abdominal surgery and source of education.

We searched MEDLINE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Embase, Scopus, and CINAHL for peer-reviewed articles. We searched the publications of professional associations, clinical guidelines, driver's licensing agencies, and clinical trial registries for gray literature. Searches generated 2,908 peer-reviewed titles and abstracts and 20 documents in the gray literature.

We included articles and documents published in English in which authors reported education, advice, counseling, or recommendations about return to driving after abdominal surgery for women ages 16 to 50 years.

We identified 16 peer-reviewed articles and eight documents in the gray literature. We extracted data including the title, authors, country of origin, study design, study purpose, sample size, type of abdominal surgery, education about return to driving, source of evidence to support the education, source of education, outcomes, and relevance to the review question.

We found that recommendations about when to return to driving after abdominal surgery ranged from 1 to 10 weeks after surgery, and 6 weeks after surgery was the most common. Recommended times were shorter for laparoscopic surgeries and longer for nonlaparoscopic surgeries, including cesarean. Most recommendations were provided by health care providers, and some recommendations were provided in leaflets. Evidence to support these recommendations was limited, and they were based on common sense, traditional practice, perceptions of insurance policies, a women's comfort level, or her ability to deploy the emergency brake.

Education provided to women about return to driving after abdominal surgery varies substantially and has a weak evidence base.