Umbilical Cord Compression Leading Cause of Brain Damage to Newborns

During labor and delivery, it is common practice to monitor the health of the baby using a fetal heart rate monitor.

This is a non-invasive device that allows the physician and nurses to ensure that the baby is receiving sufficient amounts of oxygen during their delivery. Reading the results allows the medical personnel to assess how the delivery is proceeding and whether or not surgical intervention may be necessary. Prolonged lack of oxygen can cause serious brain injury to a newborn baby. If your child is now mentally disabled due to improper monitoring during their delivery, it is recommended that you speak with a medical malpractice attorney. The ongoing care that your child may need can be very costly, and it is only right that the negligent hospital staff be responsible for covering that expense.

The umbilical cord is an unborn baby’s lifeline.

Through it a mother is able to nourish her unborn child and supply them with much needed oxygen. Throughout pregnancy a baby will experience and can tolerate some compression of the cord for short periods of time. Contractions during labor will apply pressure to the cord, leading to small bursts of compression. This is a normal occurrence, and with fetal monitoring the obstetrician is able to monitor that the pressure is not putting the baby into distress.

During delivery, when the mother begins to push, even more pressure may be asserted onto the cord. Doctors and nurses are trained at reading the details given by the fetal monitor and should be able to note a pattern that indicates the baby is in too much distress and needs to come out of the womb immediately.

Birth Injuries

After being given birth inducing drugs the night before, an expectant Missouri mom was assessed by her obstetrician. He noted that dilation was complete and instructed her to begin pushing with the next contractions. He failed to make note of the fetal monitor strip that showed repeated deceleration of the babies heart rate, a strong indication that the cord was being compressed repeatedly. The first push dropped the heart rate of the baby to 60 beats per minute. 60 beats per minute does not allow blood to get to the organs, including the brain. It took the obstetrician over 4 minutes to return to the hospital room and order an emergency c-section. By the time she was finally delivered she was clearly suffering from severe oxygen deprivation.

Evidence from expert witnesses showed that had the c-section been performed before pushing began, the child would have most likely been healthy. The failure of the obstetrician to properly read the monitor before proceeding with the vaginal delivery caused the babies cerebral palsy. She will now require a lifetime of 24-hour professional care. The hospital in this case settled with the plaintiffs for $3.7 million, while the obstetrician exhausted his $1 million insurance. On top of that he paid out of pocket $20,000.

St. Louis Birth Injury Lawyers

Cases such as these are made even more tragic with the knowledge that had the physician taken a moment to properly analyze the results of the fetal monitor, the injury would have been avoided. While we hope that all babies are brought into this world completely healthy, tragically that is not always the case. If prolonged umbilical cord compression has left your child with a mental disability, ask a medical malpractice attorney at the Zevan and Davidson Law Firm to review the records of his or her delivery. If there was any negligence on the part of the physician or nurses, you and your child deserve to be compensated for it.

To schedule a free consultation call (314) 588-7200.

photo credit: storyvillegirl