A New York Birth Injury Lawyer Can Hold Lax Med Staff Responsible
Birth injuries can be debilitating, and at times, even fatal. This is the main reason an experienced New York birth injury lawyer does what he does, to ensure that negligent parties are held responsible for their lackadaisical performance in overseeing a birth.
A certain mother from Florida was one of the unlucky ones who got paired with “incompetent” attending physicians. As soon as she began experiencing contractions, she went to the hospital and got admitted. The medical staff then administered a few examinations and found out that her infant’s heart rate is fluctuating down with moderate variability from its baseline. The first doctor who examined her classified the heart rate fluctuations as Category I, which is considered normal.
It was a second, different doctor, though, who identified the actual problem. The physician reclassified the baby’s heart rate fluctuations as Category II, which clearly indicates fetal decline. It was then recommended that the mother go through C-section if the conditions don’t improve but she was never prepared for such. She never received another vital checkup for over 2 hours and, as a result, her infant was delivered the normal way without respiratory effort—a situation which would’ve been prevented had she undergone stringent monitoring.
It was then that the baby was diagnosed with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), which is a type of brain injury due to asphyxia (suffocation). It occurs when an infant’s brain doesn’t receive enough oxygen and blood, and is a pretty potent mortality decider—it has caused 23% of all newborn deaths worldwide.
A brain starved of oxygen presents a terrifying situation for the victim. When brain tissue gets deprived of oxygen-rich blood, a trail of events could follow which may lead to permanent brain damage and even death. The brain in itself is extremely sensitive to a holdup in the supply of oxygenated blood—it can only last three to six minutes without oxygen before potent brain damage occurs. Prolong the deprivation to 10 and even 15 minutes, and there’s little to no chance of survival.
Brain damage at birth caused by factors such as HIE can lead to numerous illnesses later on. If the deprivation lasts even for a few minutes, it can already lead to conditions from simple ones like impaired vision to lifelong, debilitating ones such as cerebral palsy. This is the price babies (and their parents) in any state are made to pay unjustly by negligent medical staff; as such, holding them responsible for their actions is near-automatic. Fortunately for patients in New York, the services of skilled birth injury lawyers from Brooklyn firms such as the Law Offices of Joseph Lichtenstein are more than able to help.
(Source: Florida Couple Files Birth Injury Lawsuit, Injury Lawyer News, April 7, 2015)