Suppose you only have one case of it being used and the patient had mortal injuries with a 5% chance to survive to begin with and is now in a coma, with maybe days or weeks from waking up if he makes it.

It would be a bit early to give some overeager journalist something to "report" (let's be real, more like: "exaggerate beyond recognition").

When patients only have a 5% chance of making it without the procedure, you need a lot more than a few trials to get a good idea of whether this procedure helps.

Also if I was a patient who just survived some traumatic injury from which a full recovery is unlikely, the last thing I would want is a bunch of journalists of all people bearing down on me immediately after. I rarely talk to journalists on my best days.

Yet the most exciting phrase in science is "that's odd". And not "odd" in the sense of doing a statistically sound experiment, because that comes later.