Medical dramas give bad information about seizure treatment

The "Sherlock Holmes" aspect of diagnostic medicine on "House" is real, however, and the description of the detective process in those mystery books reflects what real doctors do, she said.

Sanders tries to read all of the show's scripts, and she'll send an e-mail with points she considers erroneous from a medical perspective. Sometimes the show will take her advice and fix the inaccuracies, and other times, they will remain in the final broadcast.

There have been other studies showing that television medical shows do a poor job of portraying procedures appropriately and accurately. Of concern is one about cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, Sanders said. A 1996 New England Journal of Medicine study of "ER," "Chicago Hope" and "Rescue 911" found that in the episodes viewed, 75 percent of patients survived cardiac arrest immediately, and 67 percent appeared to be well enough to leave the hospital. In real life, long-term survival rates vary from 2 to 30 percent for cardiac arrest outside a hospital and 6.5 to 15 percent for arrests inside a hospital, the study said.

False depictions of CPR are probably more alarming than misrepresented seizure care, Sanders said. Normally, seizure care is left to doctors, who don't get their information on treatments from television. But CPR is a procedure that lay people do learn how to do, and they might get false impressions from watching dramas, she said.

Medicine today requires a collegial environment, with constant collaboration among technicians, radiologists, surgeons, doctors, nurses and other hospital professionals. That's why House's character -- crotchety, aggressive, egocentric and disrespectful of rules -- is somewhat unrealistic, she said. There are, of course, doctors with big egos, but getting along is important, she said.

"We've all learned how to work together with our own and other people's enormous egos to serve patients' needs," Sanders said. "There might be doctors like House, there are not very many, and I would suspect that they're not nearly as successful."