Articles Posted in Birth Injury

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At 37 weeks gestation, Jomayra Rodriguez, 31, was admitted to Yale New Haven Hospital. Rodriguez, whose baby had abdominal ascites in his stomach, was then induced. Abdominal ascites is a condition in which fluid collects in spaces within the abdomen. As fluid collects, it can affect a patient’s lungs, kidneys and other organs. Ascites can cause abdominal pain, swelling, nausea, vomiting and often other physical ailments.

Rodriguez’s labor continued for three days but did not progress. Although she was scheduled for a cesarean section, the induction process was first restarted. Her baby suffered shoulder dystocia and then abdominal dystocia. Unfortunately, the baby died in Rodriguez’s uterus.

Rodriguez, individually and on behalf of her son, sued Yale University alleging wrongful death and mismanagement of the delivery. The Rodriguez family asserted that the defendant hospital should have performed a timely cesarean section considering the size of the baby, which exceeded the 90th percentile, or a timely abdominal paracentesis. Abdominal paracentesis is usually a simple bedside procedure in which a needle is inserted into the peritoneal cavity to remove the ascitic fluid.
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Brittani Clavet was admitted to the University of Connecticut’s John Dempsey Hospital at 35 weeks gestation. The treating obstetrician, Dr. David Park, allegedly attempted a manual rotation of the baby’s head while observing that she was in the occiput posterior position.

An occiput posterior position is when the baby’s head is down, but it is facing the mother’s front instead of her back. It is known to be safe to deliver a baby facing this way, but it is harder for the baby to get through the mother’s pelvis.

A resident physician attempted a second manual rotation, after which the fetal monitor began to show frequent deep deceleration and tachycardia. Dr. Park allegedly ordered a stat cesarean section.
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A federal district court judge in Chicago declined to stay the prejudgment interest in a medical malpractice case, reaching a similar conclusion given by another federal judge in this highly anticipated ruling.

In a written opinion recently published, U.S. District Court Judge Steven C. Seeger declined to rule on the constitutionality of the Illinois Prejudgment Interest Act.

“Defendants offer no reason to stay application of the statute, other than a barebones gesture to a non-binding state court decision,” the judge wrote in a statement. “That’s not enough of a reason to stay the application of a statute that promotes settlement talks.”
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A hospital and doctor have agreed to pay $12 million to settle a lawsuit filed by an Indiana mother whose baby sustained permanent brain damage during child birth in 2002.

The mother, K.C., on behalf of her daughter, filed the lawsuit in 2010 against Dr. Monique Jones and Advocate South Suburban Hospital in Hazel Crest. The plaintiff alleged that, when she went into labor, Jones acted negligently.

The lawsuit says Jones, who was the patient’s obstetrician, failed to recognize that the fetus was distressed. The doctor ordered or gave K.C. more Pitocin, a contraction-inducing drug. Increased contractions resulted in a loss of oxygen to the baby, and the baby suffered a permanent brain injury, according to the plaintiff’s suit.
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It is no secret that thousands of American patients die or are permanently and seriously injured by medical providers. More than 250,000 Americans die in hospitals every year due to medical errors. That staggering number makes deaths in hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, assisted living facilities and long-term care centers the third most common cause of death in the United States. The number of Americans who die because of the negligent errors made by medical providers is higher than those who die because of respiratory disease, accidents, stroke and Alzheimer’s disease.

According to the study by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the causes of the deaths are not isolated to one common medical practice area.

The Johns Hopkins research involves a comprehensive analysis of four large studies. According to a report a year ago by the Washington Post, the Johns Hopkins report took into account studies from the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of the Inspector General and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality between 2000 to 2008. The calculation of 251,000 deaths in a year amounts to nearly 700 deaths a day — about 9.5 percent of all deaths annually in the United States.
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J.B. was 35 years old and in her 26th week of her third pregnancy when she developed a severe headache and abdominal cramping. J.B. called her treating obstetrician’s office and later spoke to an on-call physician. That doctor diagnosed a gastrointestinal issue and told J.B. that there was no need for her to go to the hospital.

About 14 hours later, J.B. suffered a stroke. She now suffers from cognitive impairment and paralysis in her right arm, leg and foot. She had been a factory worker earning about $37,000 a year, but now is unable to work at all.

J.B. and her husband sued the obstetrician and her practice, alleging that she chose not to take a full and appropriate history, which would have revealed that J.B.’s abdominal pain was located exclusively in her upper right quadrant, indicative of preeclampsia.

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When the government is the only defendant in a Federal Tort Claims Act, the statute of limitations is two years. It doesn’t matter whether the plaintiff — who is the injured party in a medical negligence case — was a minor at the time of the injury. The statute is clear in that it states that a claim accrues when the plaintiff discovers, or a reasonable person in the plaintiff’s position would have discovered, that she had in fact been injured by an act or omission attributable to the government. The issue in this case was when the two-year countdown started.

Tenille Wallace’s medical-malpractice claim was against two defendants — the federally funded Friend Family Health Center and a private institution, the University of Chicago Hospital. The case presented the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals with a “new twist” on the usual scenario.

Wallace received prenatal care at the Friend Family Health Center. Her son, E.Y., had a troubled delivery and has been diagnosed as suffering from diplegic cerebral palsy. E.Y. was born at the University of Chicago Hospital on April 4, 2005.

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Ms. Doe, 17, experienced back and abdominal pain in her 34th week of the pregnancy. She was admitted to a local hospital where her condition deteriorated over the next several days.

Ms. Doe was then diagnosed as having sepsis and placed on a ventilator. After giving birth to her daughter, Ms. Doe’s respiratory status worsened, prompting a Code Blue. Despite efforts to resuscitate, she suffered a hypoxic brain injury resulting in cognitive impairment. Ms. Doe now requires 24-hour care and lives in a nursing home facility.

The lawsuit against the hospital claimed that the hospital’s respiratory therapists chose not to properly adjust Ms. Doe’s ventilator settings. It was alleged that the settings or the lack of the proper settings was the cause of Ms. Doe’s brain injury. The lawsuit did not claim lost income.

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Cynthia and Kenneth Williams’s first child was born with sickle cell anemia. After the birth of their first child, the Williamses found out that they both had the sickle cell trait in which a normal gene is paired with the allele that causes sickle-shaped hemoglobin.

Individuals who carry this sickle cell trait usually don’t have symptoms of the blood disorder because their normal gene creates functional hemoglobin. However, when a baby is born from parents who both have the sickle cell trait, there is a 25% chance of getting two of the abnormal genes and the full-blown sickle cell disease for the child.

The Williamses were unwilling to take a chance with a second baby, and Cynthia decided to have tubal ligation. However, Cynthia became pregnant again allegedly because her physician, Dr. Byron Rosner, failed to close off one of her fallopian tubes during the sterilization surgery.

The Williams’s second child was born with the sickle cell disease.

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A 34-year-old patient, Sally Arbogast, underwent a vaginal delivery but experienced sharp abdominal pain and moderate bleeding right afterward.  She had delivered her last child by a Cesarean section. The obstetrician who cared for her performed a manual exploration and curettage procedure to rule out uterine scar rupture and later diagnosed uterine atony — a loss of tone in the muscles in the uterus.  It has been noted that 90% of all postpartum bleedings are associated with uterine atony, which is the failure of the uterine muscles to contract normally after the baby and placenta are delivered.

For an hour and a half, Arbogast remained hypotensive and tachycardic. Her blood work showed lower hemoglobin and hematocrit levels compared to before the baby was born.

While the doctors were looking into the patient’s hypotension, she coded.  After resuscitation measures and a blood transfusion, Arbogast received multiple units of packed blood cells and fresh frozen plasma over the next five hours.

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