Malpractice Case Against Doctor For Failure To React To Placental Abruption

A placental abruption injury is a condition where the placental lining detaches away from the mother's uterus

. In cases where placental abruption occurs, to not put the mother and child at risk of severe injury or death, a physician should immediately diagnose the situation and preform an emergency C-section. Symptoms which point to placental abruption include extreme pain and abnormal bleeding in the mother or a decrease in the heart rate of the unborn child.

Consider the following documented situation, a woman was admitted to the hospital after she began labor. a brief time later, her baby's heart rate dropped from 150 to 90 putting the baby in severe fetal distress. Despite the nurse's attempts to raise the heart rate it did not work and the nurse paged the mother's doctor. Approximately fifteen minutes after the doctor was paged and thirty minutes after the mother was admitted, he arrived at the hospital. Following an examination of the mother he believed that she would need have an emergency C-section. But he did not have the credentials to perform this operation so the mother had to wait for a obstetrician to arrive at the hospital.

Following an examination of the mother the obstetrician determined she suffered a partial placental abruption and contacted a surgical team to go forward with a C-section. This emergency C-section happened about 60 minutes after the woman was admitted. Unfortunately, as too much time had gone by before the C-section, the child was born with severe brain damage that placed her in a irreversible vegetative state. Making the parents further suffer, the problems from the birth required the mother to undergo a hysterectomy preventing her from having any other children.

Soon after this happendt, the mother, father and child filed a malpractice claim against the mother's physician, arguing that if the doctor had paged the surgical team shortly after being paged by the nurse, the child and mother's injuries would not have happened. If this had occurred the C-section would have taken place about a half hour after the mother had been admitted, as an alternative to the 60 minutes that it actually took. Furthermore, although the physician denied it, the mother testified that after the delivery the physician informed her that he should have requested the surgical team earlier.

Following the trial, the child, mother and father were successful in obtaining an award of $7 million, with $3.2 million to the child, $2.3 million to the mother and $1.5 million to the father. As clear from this verdict, the jury sent a message to physicians. If a obstetrician fails to act immediately when it is clear that the health of the unborn child is at risk and the failure to act results in injury to the baby, this physician will be substantially liable.

This lawsuit is an example of how in circumstances in which a baby experiences an irreversible impairment as a result of a physician's error juries may award the baby and family an amount enough to provide for the future care of the baby. Parents who suspect their baby was harmed due to medical malpractice ought to consult with a birth injury attorney right away as the law restricts the time within which a claim needs to be filed.

by: Joseph Hernandez

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