"Internal decapitation" highlights media sloppiness?

Are we well served by our general news media? It sometimes doesn’t seem that way when the subject is one of a scientific (including medical) nature. I came across an article on CNN that tells the story of Shannon Malloy of Nebraska, a woman who survived a horrendous car accident. My sincere wishes for a strong and rapid recovery go to Ms Malloy, but this piece is not about her. It’s about the way her story was reported.

The article struck me as highly suspicious. To begin with I had a hard time accepting an article that boldly starts with:

Even her surgeon calls her a miracle

and that proceeds to inform the reader that “internal decapitation” is the “clinical” name for the type of spinal trauma suffered by Ms Malloy. This, I think readers will agree, does not have the ring of quality medical reportage. I searched the general media for other versions of this story, and found quite a few on Yahoo! News, SFGate.com, The Denver Channel, FOX News, and others (including the Associated Press video available online). The overwhelming majority of versions of this story I came across were worded very similarly, suggesting that the source material from the Associated Press news agency was very briefly adapted or simply reprinted on the news web sites. Almost all versions of this story had similar failings, which took all of ten minutes to clarify thanks to a web search.

To begin with, I found that the injury suffered by Ms Malloy is properly known as traumatic atlanto-occipital dissociation or dislocation (AOD), about which the reader may learn more here and here (PDF). This extremely severe trauma involves the top of the spinal column (the atlas) becoming separated (i.e., dissociated or dislocated) from the spine’s housing at the back of the skull (the occiput). None of the medical resources I browsed mentioned “internal decapitation”, nor do I know where that term might originate.

Next, is it really necessary to insert pseudo-witnessing into an article on medicine? After reading multiple versions of the same story I cannot even count the number of times I encountered the word “miracle”. “Miracles do happen”. “Even her surgeon calls her a miracle”. Miracle here, there, everywhere. Add to that the “will to survive” – a loose reference to free will? – and you have what starts to sound like a Christian evangelical reaffirmation.

Of course, no doctor would hesitate to tell us that positive attitude and survival instinct play a significant role in patient recovery, but strength and instinct tend to improve success chances only after one factors in medical intervention! Yet the articles were rather sparse in details of the treatments and procedures carried out by the doctors who saved Ms Malloy’s life.

Dr Gary Ghiselli, the orthopaedic spine surgeon who (I presume – it is not actually stated in most of the articles) treated Ms Malloy, is perhaps partially responsible. He is quoted as saying “It’s a miracle that she was able to survive from the actual accident. It’s a miracle that she’s made the progress that she’s made”. I can only conclude that the word “miracle” as used by Dr Ghiselli refers to a remarkable occurrence in medical science and not to an extraordinary event attributed to a divine agency. But it’s not Dr Ghiselli’s job to provide context to the audience in his brief soundbyte, it’s the media’s job – and if the media employ the word “miracle” repeatedly without providing a good contextual framework they are doing a disservice to the audience.

The result is that these sloppy and incomplete news stories focus on the feel-good factor of Ms Malloy’s survival while reasserting that “miracles” are possible. These articles don’t contain a great deal of useful information, and actively exclude the real reason that Ms Malloy is with us today: the large teams of highly trained professionals who battled for long hours against difficult odds to save and rehabilitate her.

I understand that most of us aren’t familiar with medical terminology or procedure (I for one am not), but is it necessary to dumb down a remarkable story like this one by substituting impressive medical science with multiple mentions of miracles? Have we become so dazed that we eagerly drink down this uninformative mixture without questioning it? Do we prefer to hear meaningless blanket terms such as “miracle” rather than learn something new, such as how surgeons address a problem as severe as atlanto-occipital dissociation?

The most we get from the majority of articles is this (this particular one is from the FOX News story):

Five screws were drilled into Malloy’s neck. Four more were drilled into her head to keep it stabilized. Then a thing called a halo — rods and a circular metal bar — was attached for added support. It’s not exactly a pain-free procedure.

If we were to take this at face value we would be excused for assuming that doctors positioned Ms Malloy’s head on top of her neck and bolted a halo on her before sending her home to await the miracle. Instead, I strongly suspect, long and complicated spinal fusion surgery had to be carried out, probably with a bone graft from some other part of her body in addition to the insertion of metal pins in her vertebrae and skull.

Finally, the articles on Ms Malloy all go out of their way to point out how incredibly rare it is to see recovery from traumatic atlanto-occipital dislocation. There is no doubt whatsoever that this is an extremely dangerous form of trauma, yet a highly informative article on the Arizona Republic web site introduces us to a neurosurgeon who patched back together no less than three cases in one year! I recommend the preceding article to anyone who wants to learn more about AOD without resorting to medical resources. Note that the Arizona Republic article is from 2006 and thus makes no mention of Ms Malloy’s case, which occurred this year.

Surely we cannot be satisfied with such a level of detail quality from the general media, who serve as our purveyors of information – whether it’s the original story from Associated Press or the variations on various news outlets, we’ve been fed substandard information fare.

This is how ignorance creeps into society: bit by bit, slowly subverting persons one dumbed-down story at a time, gradually eroding the potential to think for one’s self, to distinguish fact from the general background noise of everyday life. Rather than encourage everyone to learn something new, we simplify and dumb down and lower the standards. To be fair, there are many fine pieces of coverage on medical and scientific subjects to be found alongside the less informative, more fluffly items. There certainly is no media conspiracy to turn the audience into a horde of miracle-worshipping ignoramuses, the problem rather seems to be one of occasional sloppiness. The media have an obligation to the audience, but if the audience does not hold the media accountable, who will?