Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy is a form of perinatal asphyxia, which is caused by systemic hypoxemia and/or reduced cerebral blood flow, according to Medscape.com. HIE is the cause of 840,000, or 23%, of all neonatal deaths worldwide. When labor is prolonged, the baby spends too much time in the birth canal with restricted blood flow and raised [...]
A bombshell article recently published in USA TODAY uncovered surprising information about the maternal mortality rate in the United States. Writer Alison Young researched four years for the piece “Hospitals know how to protect mothers. They just aren’t doing it,” which revealed the startling news that the U.S. is now the most dangerous place in [...]
Giving birth is a natural and (usually) safe process, with your obstetrician and other medical staff on hand to help it along and assist mother and baby in the event of any complications. During the birth process, babies are especially vulnerable, and if a doctor fails to treat, or improperly treats, a complication or condition, [...]
Pregnancy is, as everyone says, a magical time. And it very much is, when you stop and think about how much work your body is doing all by itself. Take the umbilical cord, for example. This cord tethers mother and baby together, providing the fetus with all the oxygen and nutrients it needs to grow [...]
Parents and other family members of children who are the victims of preventable injuries at birth due to substandard care provided by medical personnel during pregnancy, labor, or delivery have the option to pursue legal action. Cases that involve birth injury often involve an allegation that medical staff fell short in their obligation to deliver [...]
When you think of medical malpractice, what comes to mind might include a doctor making an honest mistake, a miscalculation, or some confusion in communication among the medical team ended in an error that harmed a patient. But would you think that a doctor, who was in the process of delivering a baby who was [...]
Ideally, the birth process is easy and uneventful. Every few seconds, somewhere on earth a baby is born, and most of those journeys from the mother's womb into the world will be largely uneventful. In a small percentage of cases, birth injury occurs that creates trauma –physical and emotional, for both infant and mother. Traumatic [...]
A recent study that was published in the JAMA Pediatrics on the risk of birth injury connected to gestational diabetes has been connected to the mother’s use of glyburide during pregnancy. Glyburide, which is sold under the brand names, DiaBeta and Micronage, is an oral diabetes medication that controls blood sugar levels in people with [...]
When you work in the world of medical malpractice, and especially when your job involves helping the victims of that malpractice, you have to learn to separate your emotions from your work; sometimes it is the only way to effectively help someone. But there are some stories, and some cases, that make it almost impossible [...]
In a study published by the National Institutes of Health, the Stillbirth Collaborative Research Network recently reported on the possible cause of death for 512 stillborn infants whose mothers gave consent for the postmortem exam. Umbilical cord accidents (UCA) accounted for 10% of the stillbirths in the study. A review of the literature on stillbirths [...]
