subject: The Use Of of Antibiotics To Prevent Group B Strep Infections in New Born Children [print this page] The Use Of of Antibiotics To Prevent Group B Strep Infections in New Born Children
A pregnant woman who is a carrier of the Group b strep might transmit the bacteria to her baby during labor even if the mother is asymptomatic. Research demonstrate that between fifteen to forty percent of expecting mothers have Group b strep. If there is no intervention, an infant born to a woman who is a carrier of the bacteria has a 1 in 200 possibility of developing a Group B Strep infection. By administering the right antibiotics in the course of labor the likelihood that she will pass the bacteria to her baby is reduced by 2,000%.
To help identify which expecting mothers need to be administered antibiotics in the course of labor, asymptomatic pregnant women are screened for Group B Strep approximately from the thirty-fifth and thirty-seventh week of the pregnancy. Getting tested for Group B Strep is a straightforward process. Because the bacteria mostly colonizes inside the urinary and vaginal tract of the mother, a swab is used to get a sample. The outcome of the screen are normally accessible within forty-eight hours.
When a baby acquires a GBS infection but is not treated in a timely basis, the infection may develop into pneumonia, sepsis or meningitis. Because a baby's immune systems is not fully developed, the baby may be left with lifelong physical and neurological harm that may prevent the child from ever living a normal life. And of the roughly seventy-six hundred children each year who become infected with GBS ten to fifteen percent do not survive.
With the considerable threat a group b strep infection presents for infants, physicians examining an infant who has signs consistent with a GBS infection and whose mother tested positive during the pregnancy ought to include it in their differential diagnosis. Consider, for instance, a reported lawsuit in which a baby, born to a woman who had tested positive for the bacteria during the pregnancy, started to exhibit signs consistent with a Group B Strep infection shortly after birth. However, the treating physician failed to correlate the symptoms in the baby's postnatal record with the prenatal record which contained information that the GBS bacteria had been found in the mother during the pregnancy. Hence, the proper diagnosis was was untimely and antibiotics were not used right away.
As a result of the time that passed before antibiotics were administered, the infant sustained a brain injury. The law firm that helped the family described that the case settled for $3,875,000
Babies can develop the GBS infection even if antibiotics were given to the mother during labor. Research conducted recently also showed that there are a number of newborns who develop the infection even if the mother screened negative. Physicians thus need to consider it as part of their differential diagnosis whenever a baby exhibits signs consistent with GBS . As this matter illustrates Not reading the prenatal records or considering Group B Strep might constitute liability for medical malpractice.
