Examples of common birth injuries resulting from malpractice range from brain injury that may result in impaired or delayed motor development or intellectual disability through to Erbs palsy and other brachial plexus injury. For a more complete discussion of the full range of birth injuries, their causes, and the obstetrical malpractice lawyer’s strategies for discovering the physician’s or hospital staff’s culpability in causing the injuries, please consider our Obstetrical Malpractice Lawyers and Birth Injury Attorneys page. Here we will discuss brain injuries which may not become apparent to parents immediately at birth, indeed commonly not resulting in parental concern until the baby fails to meet his or her expected milestones and in cases of mild intellectual disability may not be diagnosed until the child enters school. Brain injuries sustained at birth may be due to a number of causes, including oxygen deprivation, hypoxia, anoxia, or traumatic brain injury. There are a number of failures of hospital staff and obstetricians which can lead to brain injury. The hospital staff may not properly or timely apply fetal monitoring or fail to properly assess fetal distress, or they may fail to act sufficiently quickly to alert the mother’s obstetrician or the appropriate specialists to deliver the baby by cesarean section before the baby sustains brain damage. The obstetrician may fail to recognize fetal distress or delay delivery including by cesarean section to assure that the baby’s brain is not deprived of oxygen.

There are a number of ways that an appropriately qualified birth injury attorney and hospital and obstetrical malpractice lawyer can help to discover whether the hospital staff or obstetrician complied with the applicable standards of care. Obtaining the fetal monitor strips – the recordings of the of the baby’s heart beat in utero – may provide obvious evidence that the hospital staff or obstetrician failed to recognize or appropriately act to deliver the baby before it had sustained brain damage. The obstetrician sometimes will cause a traumatic brain injury during the delivery by his or her negligence in pulling the baby’s head out of the birth canal manually or with forceps. The consequences of the brain damage thus inflicted are many, depending upon the aspects of the brain which are injured. Where the fetus suffers hypoxia, the baby may be born “blue,” and have other indicators of hypoxia leading to a low APGAR score, which can also serve as important evidence of the precipitating cause of the baby’s brain damage and the hospital staff’s or obstetrician’s negligence. If the baby’s head is grossly misshapen following delivery this may also be an indicator that brain damage resulting from a traumatic brain injury sustained at delivery. Often testing will be done, such as CT or MRI scans, which will also provide evidence of brain hemorrhage indicative of traumatic brain injury sustained at delivery. The parents may not be aware of magnitude or the significance of the duration of their baby’s fetal distress or their baby’s APGAR scores, and traumatic brain injury may not be obvious to them as their physicians explain the their baby’s initially misshapen head as normal. But the evidence will remain in the hospital charts, in the fetal monitor recordings, in the APGAR scores, the nurses notes, the physicians notes, the records of the results of MRI or CT scans and other tests. It is for this reason that it is important when the parents discover that their baby is brain damaged, or diagnosed with cerebral palsy or mild, moderate or profound mental retardation, that they obtain a consultation from a qualified birth injury attorney and hospital and obstetrical malpractice lawyer.

If upon review of the facts the California birth injury lawyer is suspicious that the baby’s brain damage may have resulted from hospital negligence or obstetrical malpractice, then with the parents agreement and written authorization, he will obtain the medical records and have them reviewed by an appropriately qualified medical specialist. In most cases this is the only way to confidently determine whether a baby’s brain injury may have resulted from the negligence of the involved health care professionals.

Brain injury occurring at birth may manifest in the baby in a number of ways which may be obvious soon after birth or may only become obvious to the parents and even their physicians much later, as baby fails to develop as the parents monitor the baby’s progress in achieving expected milestones. The baby may have seizures within the first 24 hours after birth, or may not, or may evidence poor sucking, poor muscle strength, or blue colored skin, which are immediate indicators of possible brain damage; or the baby may suffer deficiencies in motor development, often the result of Cerebral Palsy; or the baby may only later be diagnosed as intellectually disabled. Parents whose baby suffers these symptoms or diagnoses indicative of brain damage should want to find out the cause, and that is where the birth injury lawyer and obstetrical malpractice attorney can be of aid.

Ray Henke, Esq. Obstetrical Malpractice Lawyer and Birth Injury Attorney