MS patients at higher risk of fatal accidents

A Danish study has found that people with multiple sclerosis are more prone to fatal accidents than the general population, and that the higher fatality rate is not due to traffic accidents but to burns and suffocation.The study investigators recently reported that the mortality of people with MS in Denmark is almost three times that of the general Danish population, mainly due to a higher rate of death from diseases and a two-fold higher risk of suicide, compared to the general population. In the present study, the authors estimated the rates of death from accidents in people with MS and compared this to estimated rates of death from accidents in the general population.The study was based on linkage of the Danish Multiple Sclerosis Registry to the Cause of Death registry and covered all 10,174 people diagnosed with MS from 1953 to 1996. Of a total 4,361 people with MS who had died before 1999, 76 people had died from an accident. This figure is 37% higher than the calculated expected number of accident-related fatalities (55.7) in the general population.The investigators divided fatalities into five main groups - traffic accidents, poisoning, falls, burns and suffocation. The results showed that the observed number of deaths from road accidents (15) was not significantly higher than the expected number (18.9), nor was the observed number of deaths from falls (17) any higher than the expected number (13.2). However, the number of deaths from burns (17) was much higher than the expected number (1.9), as was the number of deaths from suffocation (11 versus expected 2.0).Commenting on the results, the investigators suggest that the lack of a higher risk of fatal road accidents may be because people with MS choose to give up driving. They add that the fivefold increase in suffocation is not surprising, as the risk of suffocation from foodstuffs due to difficulties in swallowing is a known problem in patients with the disease. Fatalities due to burns may reflect the difficulty in people with MS escaping a fire due to insufficient mobility, they suggest.Reference...