Older pilots are more likely than their younger counterparts to be honest in their reporting to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on the medications they use, according to a study by researchers from the FAA’s Civil Aerospace Medical Institute (CAMI).1
In addition, the study, which compared the medications found in post-accident toxicology tests with those that had been reported by the pilots in previous applications for FAA medical certificates, found that holders of special issuance (SI) medical certificates2 also were more likely to be truthful in reporting their medication use.
“[T]he probability of a pilot truthfully reporting medication use increases with age and an SI medical certificate,” the authors said in a report on the study, published in the July issue of Aerospace Medicine and Human Performance. In cases involving only cardiovascular drugs, age was the sole reliable predictor of truthful reporting, the report said.
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