Social Media Saves Woman's Crushed Face

While searching for news stories about social media, I happened to stumble across an article about a woman's face being saved with the help of social media. You may now be wondering how social media could have possibly saved a woman's face, and I was too when I first read the title of the aforementioned article. However, I read on and I hope you do too!

Dr. Elizabeth Calton, a 38-year old pediatric doctor based in London, was horseback riding when all of a sudden she had to jump off her horse, Barney, after he was frightened by a noise. After Dr. Calton performed the emergency dismount, the startled horse accidentally crushed some of her ribs and face.

After discovered by a passerby, she was taken to St. George's Hospital, a teaching hospital with an abundance of specialists. There she was treated by a total of nine surgeons over the course of 10 hours, with the help of 41 screws and 11 plates.

Social media was involved with the treatment by the utilization of Dr. Calton's Facebook profile. The doctors quickly located the patient's online profile and based the reconstruction of her face and bone structure with these pictures.

X-Ray of facial fractures ( © Elizabeth Calton / SWNS.com)

Dr. Nick Hyde, the plastic surgeon who led the operation, described the injury as very rare and the surgery as complex and labor-intensive. The operation ultimately succeeded thanks to the help of everyone involved in Dr. Calton's care.

Reading this article made me think about something we talked about the first day of class: the importance of a good profile picture. Had this woman's picture online been taken from a weird angle, with bad lighting or with a low quality camera, Dr. Calton's surgeons might not have been able to reconstruct her face correctly.

The article also made me think of apps like Facetune, Perfect 365, AirBrush, Photoshop and Snapchat where users can edit and filter their faces in any way they like. This can mean altering face shapes, whitening teeth, adjusting facial features to be more conventionally appealing, softening your skin to cover up imperfections, turning your face into a bunny or putting fake makeup on your face. Back in my middle school years I made use of these filters and editing devices to the point that the pictures I posted were obviously over edited.

The story of Dr. Calton was a real world example of the importance of using social media and using it correctly. Had Dr. Calton not had a Facebook account, doctors probably would not have had time to find someone who had a picture of her and she could've ended up not looking like herself at all. The same outcome could have happened had her pictures online not looked like her because of filters, edits, bad lighting, etc.