Articles Posted in Birth Injury

The Illinois appellate court recently overturned a $12 million Illinois medical malpractice jury verdict, ordering a new trial with a new jury. The new trial involving Northern Trust Co., et al. v. Burandt, et al., No. 2-08-0193, will include evidence brought by defendant’s medical expert that had been barred from being heard at the previous trial.
Burandt is an Illinois birth injury lawsuit filed by the parents of a child born with neurological injuries. The Illinois brain injury claim was brought against a family practice physician, alleging that the Illinois doctor contributed to the child’s injury by delaying a Cesarean delivery.
The claims specifically accused the doctor of being too slow to obtain an operating room for the C-section and in negligently slowing down the mother’s contractions before deciding to proceed with the C-section. The plaintiffs alleged that the child’s brain injuries were the result of a decreased flow of oxygen during his delayed delivery.

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Complications during childbirth may lead to severe injuries if they are untreated or treated incorrectly. In a Chicago birth injury case, the family of a six year-old quadriplegic boy filed a lawsuit against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act, or FTCA, claiming that medical malpractice during childbirth was the reason the child contracted a bacterial infection that led to his brain damage.
Under FTCA, the United States is liable for injuries resulting from a federal employee’s negligence. The doctors who failed to correctly treat the infection were employees of the federally funded clinic, Erie Family Health Center and working at Northwestern Memorial Hospital when the child was born in May 2003.
The Illinois birth injury lawsuit falls under the FTCA even though Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where the child was treated, is a private company and not federally funded. This reason for this is because the doctors who allegedly committed the medical malpractice, and therefore were the ones the lawsuit was against, were federal employees at the time. So as long as a physician is employed by the federal government in any capacity, then your Illinois medical malpractice claim would be subject to FTCA rules, even if you are being treated at a non-federally funded hospital.

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During labor and delivery minutes can sometimes be the difference between a good outcome and a poor outcome. So consider the case of a Chicago mother who was forced to wait over two hours before her baby was finally delivered. A recent Chicago birth injury malpractice case settled with Northwestern Memorial Hospital highlights the importance of timing during labor and delivery.
According to the mother’s statement, she waited for more than two hours in the obstetrical waiting area at Northwestern Memorial Hospital before a physician even evaluated her. The plaintiff’s lawyers alleged that this lengthy wait was negligent in light of the fact that upon arrival to the hospital she had been ordered for an immediate induction of labor due to her severe lack of amniotic fluid. Amniotic fluid is what protects the baby inside the womb and is extremely important to the baby’s well-being.
During the two hour wait the physicians were apparently waiting for confirmation of the baby’s status via newer tests. When the results finally did arrive they confirmed that the fetal heartbeat was very faint and that an emergency Cesearean section was in fact required. However, this delay resulted in a severe birth injury to the baby boy. He was born nearly lifeless and required resuscitation in order to be revived. He was diagnosed with severe brain damage and immediately placed on life support. The baby passed away a month after he was born.

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A Cook County birth injury lawsuit that alleged a baby boy had suffered severe brain damage during a delay in his birth was settled. The medical malpractice lawsuit was against Northwest Community Hospital, a nurse midwife, and the midwife’s employer. The case was settled and approved by a Cook County Circuit Court judge.
What was particularly interesting about the case was that the delivery was actually a waterbirth. A waterbirth is a birthing method wherein the mother is immersed in a small pool of warm water. Proponents of this method argue that it is safe and offers improved pain relief for the mother and less trauma for the baby.
In this particular Cook County birth injury case, the baby’s shoulder became trapped during the end of the delivery. The plaintiff alleged that the nurse midwife and assisting nurses did not drain the birth tub quickly enough to use the standard birthing maneuvers to free the baby’s shoulder, and that their actions delayed the baby’s delivery. Any delay in delivery can result in harm to the baby, and in this case the plaintiff alleged that the delay resulted in oxygen deprivation and brain damage in the form of cerebral palsy.

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A Cook County medical malpractice case was settled for $9.5 million after an injured child’s parents reached an agreement with his delivering obstetrician, Elmhurst Memorial Hospital, Elmhurst Clinic, LLC, and Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare. The Northern Trust Co. et al. v. Nirali Ghia, M.D., Elmhurst Memorial Hospital, et al., Case No. 04 L 7500, Circuit Court of Cook County.
In December, 2002, the now six year-old boy’s mother arrived at Elmhurst Memorial Hospital to induce labor. However, the labor did not run smoothly, and after over four hours had elapsed the medical providers opted to perform a cesarean section. When the baby boy was delivered it was found that he had cerebral palsy.
The parents’ Cook County birth injury complaint alleged that the obstetrician had failed to adequately assess and recognize that the fetus was not tolerating the stress of labor. During labor and delivery it is imperative that the nursing and medical staff not only monitor the baby and mother’s condition, but also properly interrupts the information available.
The plaintiffs further alleged that a four hour delay in performing the cesarean section led to the child’s permanent brain injury. The baby boy now suffers from cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder that affects muscle coordination and body movement.

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A recent Cook County medical malpractice case illustrates the importance of a timely delivery. The Illinois birth injury case involved the late delivery of a child after the mother presented to the hospital with warning signs of an uterine rupture.
The child is now four and has sustained permanent injuries, including cognitive visual impairment and cerebral palsy. A Cook County Circuit Court judge dismissed the case after the family reached a settlement with Loyola University Medical Center.
In this case the mother had arrived at Chicago’s Loyola University Medical Center with weak contractions and after being evaluated was assessed as not being in labor. In order to induce labor the attending physician and resident decided to administer Pitocin, a drug designed to accelerate contractions and labor.
As the staff continued to wait for the labor to progress the baby’s heart rate began to weaken, which is yet another sign of uterine rupture. Yet the physicians continued to focus on a vaginal delivery and wait. It wasn’t until the fetal heart rate had slowed to dangerously low levels that the Cesarean section was even ordered. But unfortunately by this time it was too late and the child was delivered with lifelong impairments.

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A recent New York Times editorial caught my eye about a woman in Pakistan who lost her baby after a long, difficult labor and delivery. Her experience was used to demonstrate the lack of emphasis placed on medical practices that we in America take for granted, such as giving birth to your child at a hospital, and the effect that this has on maternal and child birth injuries in impoverished countries.
Recent research suggests that worldwide perhaps as many as one woman dies every minute from complications of pregnancy or childbirth, which is about 20 times greater than the number who have suffered childbirth injuries. As a firm we have taken on several Illinois birth injury cases and there are no words you can offer the family for their loss and pain. What is so striking about The New York Times article is that it suggests that these startling statistics could improve if more emphasis was placed on maternal well being.
For example, while Sri Lanka is an impoverished country it has succeeded in saving more mothers because it simply has tried to do so. And while this sounds like an oversimple solution in our country where a great deal of emphasis is placed on prenatal care and delivery, in impoverished countries this is not the case. The girl portrayed in the article was not taken to a hospital until after she had already been in labor for over 24 hours. By the time a c-section was performed her baby was already too weak to survive. If she had been taken to the hospital and followed by medical professionals from the start of her labor then the outcome might have been different. Yet this is not the standard in her native Pakistan, where one in 74 woman die from pregnancy complications.

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A mother whose daughter was born mentally disabled and prone to seizures received $6 million in settlement from the University of Chicago Medical Center. Chicago birth injury lawsuit claimed that a Cesarean should have been ordered 35 minutes earlier and that because of the late delivery the child suffered brain damage due to lack of oxygen.
The mother in this Illinois medical negligence case was admitted to the University of Chicago Medical Center to have labor induced. At her admission two tests were done that could not establish the fetal well-being. While labor was being induced the fetal heart rate was not showing accelerations even though it should. Over the next two hours the fetal heart rate steadily declined.
The plaintiffs argued that due to that heart rate trend a Cesarean section should have been ordered immediately. The doctors waited until the baby’s heart rate fell between 100 and 105 beats per minute to order an urgent Cesarean section surgery. The baby was delivered about 30 minutes from the time the procedure was ordered. That baby is now an adult and is mentally disabled.

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Birth injuries are tragic and traumatic for parents, the child, and the whole family. Compared to the number of healthy live births in the United States, those children born with injuries are a small percentage. Improved medical devices and practices have reduced the number of birth injuries and can go a long way to preventing future birth injuries.
For example, clinicians use electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) and ultrasound equipment to visualize the fetus to confirm that the unborn child is moving, breathing, and posturing properly and to evaluate the amniotic fluid and monitor the laboring mother’s contractions. All of this information is used to detect signs of fetal distress including hypoxia, which is the lack of oxygen, and ischemia, which is the lack of blood flow.
If there is a detection of non-reassuring fetal heart tones or indications of over stimulation of the uterus during the early stages of labor then the fetal environment can become threatening and very dangerous. When the fetus is endangered the risk of neurological damage, asphyxiation, and other birth injuries increases.

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This year New Orleans was the host city for the American Association for Justice’s mid-year meeting. Illinois attorney Robert Kreisman, a civil justice attorney, attended the seminars and the birth trauma litigation group’s day long event on Monday, February 9, 2009.
Attorneys practicing civil justice traveled from all over the United States to attend the meetings. Different seminars were available each day from Saturday, February 7 through Wednesday, February 11, 2009. At the birth trauma litigation group’s full day seminar, attendees were treated to new developments in electronic fetal monitoring tracing and other issues in medicine, nursing, and hospital practices.
Additionally, the AAJ conference featured a session with a emergency department physician speaking about sepsis, pneumonia, strokes and other potential medical malpractice issues in the emergency department.
All of the speakers, medical professionals and colleagues provided insight and valuable new information to keep up to date on medical legal practices.

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