New York Injury Talk Blog

The Piedmont Medical Center has been instructed recently by a York County jury to pay damages due to hospital negligence amounting to over $4 million to a South Carolina couple, The Charlotte Observer reported in an article. The couple, Robin and Brice Wilson, had lost their infant daughter during her birth due to a brain injury.

Sierra Wilson had been born in 2003 at the hospital but lack of oxygen caused her to suffer a critical brain injury and she died of complications from cerebral palsy within a few months, the article said. The Wilsons had stated in their lawsuit that the hospital failed to note the child needed emergency intervention because a nurse trainee assigned to the expectant mother misread fetal heart monitoring data. Hospital officials reportedly defended their actions in the care that had been provided to the Wilsons and are now evaluating their legal options.

Unfortunately birth injuries caused by medical negligence are extremely common in the United States. Medical facilities of all types, small, large and well established are all, for a variety of reasons, prone to causing injury accidents and fatalities due to misdiagnoses, failure to diagnose or not taking immediate and corrective measures. It is estimated that in New York alone more than 3% of those admitted to hospitals will be seriously injured because of negligence of some type.

The New York Hospital Negligence Lawyers at Wingate, Russotti & Shapiro, L.L.P specialize in assisting victims who believe they have been seriously injured or families who have lost a loved one because of negligence on the part of a medical facility. Our New York Medical Malpractice attorneys are assigned only a specific number of cases so they can focus on best serving our clients. If you’d like to better understand your legal rights and options in your hospital negligence or birth injury case, please contact our office and we’ll be happy to set up a comprehensive initial consultation for you, at no charge.

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Posted In: Birth Injuries , Hospital Negligence , Medical Malpractice , Personal Injury

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The British press is full of reports today about a young girl there who plans to travel to China for stem-cell treatment of her cerebral palsy. Shonia Tahiliani is eight, but she can’t walk or sit upright and can’t speak, even though she understands two languages. Her parents are raising 18,000 British pounds -- more than $35,000 -- to send her to Tiantan Puhua Neurosurgical Hospital in Beijing for stem cell injections. These stem cell injections are the only known treatment for cerebral palsy (CP), which until recently was thought to be untreatable. The news comes on the heels of an announcement from the hospital that their treatment of another European CP sufferer, 19-year-old Gabor Bocskai from Hungary, has been wildly successful. The stem cell therapy has allowed Bocskai to abandon his wheelchair for a walker, after a lifetime of thinking he’d never walk at all. It has also improved his speech, vision, handwriting and mental clarity.

These events are very exciting because they may vastly improve the lives of Cerebral Palsy sufferers, some of whom we’ve had the privilege of representing here at Wingate, Russotti & Shapiro. Cerebral palsy is always caused by brain damage, due to an illness or injury in utero, oxygen deprivation during birth and occasionally a serious illness or traumatic brain injury after birth. It’s a lifelong impairment -- victims are unable to fully control how they move, which causes problems with major life skills like walking, fine motor skills like writing with a pencil, speaking and eating. It also causes seizures, mental impairment, and partial blindness or deafness.

The article doesn’t say how Shonia Tahiliani contracted CP, but here in the U.S., about twenty percent of children with CP acquire it because of a birth injury, according to United Cerebral Palsy. That’s one-fifth of the 764, 000 CP sufferers in the U.S. -- more than 150,000 people who’d be perfectly healthy if it weren’t for someone else’s mistake. They will need lifelong medical care, and many will need lifelong assistance with daily tasks. As you can imagine, this can be quite expensive, nearly unreachable for an ordinary family like the Tahilianis -- as is the Chinese stem cell therapy. We’re proud to have won millions for children who have CP due to a birth injury. Money won’t solve their problems, but it can get them the care they’ll need throughout their lives.

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Posted In: Birth Injuries

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Here's a welcome break from the usual round of medical jargon about Erb's palsy: injurednewborn.com, a site set up by Francine Litz, the mother of a daughter with a birth injury to her brachial plexus. (In short, obstetric brachial plexus injuries leave children with one arm weakened or useless, often dangling limply with the hand turned backwards. It sometimes clears up on its own, but is often a lifelong disability that requires multiple surgeries and physical therapy. The injury is almost always caused by too much pulling by doctors during birth.) Injurednewborn.com is written by a mother, not a doctor, making it more accessible to the families who suffer this disability. Litz is angry and thorough, offering extensive advice for parents of babies with brachial plexus injuries as well as advice for expectant women on how they can avoid brachial plexus injuries and other birth injuries. (She also touches on injuries the mother can sustain due to medical malpractice during a birth.) She's obviously done her research; she mentions some of the common maneuvers that doctors should try when faced with shoulder dystocia, the obstetric emergency that commonly causes brachial plexus injuries, as well as more drastic strategies like performing a C-section or breaking the mother's pelvis.

Litz also points visitors to her site to this slideshow of children who have brachial plexus injuries and information about the condition.

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Posted In: Birth Injuries

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Neonatal herpes, either type I or II, is a serious viral infection of the infant which needs immediate hospitalization and treatment. Herpes virus type I is marked by the eruption of vesicle lesions on the lips or nostrils, versus herpes virus type II which has lesions located on the genitalia. If localized neonatal herpes is left untreated, the virus may become disseminated into a virulent and fatal form. Thus, time is of the essence in the diagnosis and treatment of the localized herpes, to prevent infecting fulminating spread. Without immediate treatment, the mortality rate is over 80%, and the infants that do survive have significant permanent neurologic damages.

Overall, two (2) out of 1000 mothers have positive herpes simplex cultures at delivery, even though they have no clinical symptoms. According to the literature, there is a shedding of the virus for approximately three (3) weeks during a maternal infection outbreak. Transmission of neonatal herpes requires direct contact between the mother and infant. In the majority of cases, the infection is transmitted during labor and delivery. However, there is also known infant exposure post-delivery, if either parent has a cold sore or herpes outbreak (type I).

Neonatal herpes usually presents during the second week of life, but as late as four weeks. The first signs of the localized infection include clusters of discrete vesicles on the skin, mucosal ulcers or white lesions in the mouth, eye or ocular lesions, and lesions in the genital area. In some cases, infants present with no topical lesions, but with irritability, seizures, fevers, bulging fontanel and poor feeding. Thus, the physician needs to obtain a complete history and physical of the infant to identify possible herpes simplex virus infection. Once there is a differential diagnosis of neonatal herpes, decisive action must be taken promptly to make a correct diagnosis and intervene with treatment. The physician should perform a spinal tap for viral and bacterial cultures, blood for HSV serology, and wound cultures of the topical lesions. At the time of work-up, the infant must be immediately started with antiviral medication (intravenous Acyclovir) to prevent further spreading of the disease. Over a seven day period, intravenous Acyclovir 45mg/kg/day is usually effective in treating an infant’s localized infection. If the spinal tap culture or blood cultures turn positive, Acyclovir treatment is recommended for (21) twenty one days.

The good news is that if diagnosed early and treatment is started immediately a good outcome is likely.

For more information on this or other birth complications, please contact the New York Birth Injury Lawyers at our law firm.

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Posted In: Birth Injuries

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