Reporting Bias

It is troubling when what gets published is so misleading and a recent example is that of a study regarding spinal stenosis and surgery benefits.

Most of what has been reported in various places seems to have come from the following press release.

This news story presented a summary of a major new study comparing surgery to nonoperative treatments for lumbar spinal stenosis.

When you really evaluate the study and what was found, you would probably conclude that surgery is not all that great.

This story focused on those results that showed the greatest advantage for surgery; e.g. dramatic differences in patient-perceived “major improvement” of 63% vs. 29%, but the “truth,” many observers would say, likely lies somewhere between the minimal/modest benefits that the news story did not report and the larger benefits that it did.

In addition, the story seems to imply that surgery should be the treatment of choice for all patients with spinal stenosis but the study really does not support this.

The news story thus misses a key point and that being surgery appears to be a good choice for some people but it is not for everyone.

The news story failed to mention the possible harms of surgical treatment and it would have been worthwhile to hear from other surgeons not associated with the study to get their opinion.

The reporting on this was incomplete and arguably biased more than most medical studies.