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Birth Injury
Definition: A birth injury is an impairment of the infant’s body function or structure due to adverse influences that occurred at birth.
Birth injuries usually result of trauma suffered by an infant during labor and delivery. Typically, birth injury is due to delivery complications. Birth injuries may range from something as innocuous as a small bruise, to something as serious as Erb Palsy, Dejerine-Klumpke Palsies, cerebral palsy or brain damage.
Improper use of forceps is a common cause of birth injury, this could result in a serious injury like shoulder dystocia. In attempting to dislodge a baby’s shoulder, a physician may apply improper traction on the baby’s head thus causing it harm. Birth injuries may also occur as a result of oxygen deprivation or improper positioning in the womb.
Mild birth injury is fairly common. In deliveries that are complicated by one of the situations mentioned above, however, birth injury can result in substantial harm suffered by the infant or mother. A delivery medical team should monitor the mother and child throughout labor and delivery in order to be aware of any complications that may develop. The physician must be aware of, among other things, possible complications resulting from a large baby, the mother’s medical history, irregularities in the fetal heartbeat, and umbilical cord positioning. If the doctor fails to monitor these and other things, or fails to respond properly to situations that arise during the delivery, he may be considered negligent with regard to the duty he owes his patients. Compounding this issue is the fact that "birth certificate data may underreport or incorrectly report medical risk factor prevalence due to a lack of adherence to uniform definitions and difficulty in interpreting data from medical records."
If you or someone you know has suffered a birth injury, such as erb's palsy Brachial Plexus (shoulder dystocia) brain injury or Cerebral Palsy you may be entitled to monetary compensation. For a free evaluation of your claim by an attorney, please fill our the form below.
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