Doctor Settles Medical Malpractice Case With Parents Of Baby Who Died During Pregnancy In The Sum Of $650,000
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-09-12 22:07:25 | Word Count: 667
This matter is about a woman who wants to be a mother, but for a number of years has had hypertension. She wishes to be careful, so once she becomes pregnant she consults with her doctor who refers her to an obstetrician to monitor her pregnancy. After discussing her problems with hypertension with her obstetrician, the doctor decides to take her off her hypertension medication based on fear about the health risks it could have on her baby. Her doctor therefore chooses to control her hypertension through diet and manages to maintain her blood pressure for awhile. Still, a short time later diet alone was no longer could not control her hypertension and the obstetrician prescribes that she take half her normal dose from before her pregnancy.
During the pregnancy the woman's problems came in ebbs and flows. Sometimes everything seemed to be fine and on other occasions she'd have elevated blood pressure, have headaches, nausea, vomiting and blurred vision.
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Given the mother's symptoms she consistently sees her doctor who determines she has modest preeclampsia and prescribes her a larger dose of the blood pressure medication. At one visit after one of these episodes, the physician notes that the mother has started to leak amniotic fluid and that there were calcifications on her placenta. This is troubling and could cause harm to the mother and her child.
After the ultrasound, the doctor told the woman that the leakage was not a problem and she should not worry about it. He did not inform her that the nutritional levels in her womb had decreased and that it could effect her child. The doctor failed to inform her that her child had a heightened risk to undergo problems related to fetal hypoxia (lacking a sufficient oxygen supply). And, furthermore, he failed to perform any tests on the baby to determine how the baby was doing.
Due to these ongoing complications, the the woman's mother goes with the mother to her next appointment. The mother tells her physician that since the previous appointment her child has not been moving as much and that she has continued to have headaches and now has sinus drainage in her ears. As her situation is getting worse, her doctor informs her that he will schedule an appointment the following week to induce labor. When the maternal grandmother asks if she can be induced now, rather than next week, the obstetrician tells her not to be concerned and that the baby is better off where she is now.
When the pregnant woman got to her doctor's office the following week, she wentd in for her pre-labor ultrasound, where she learned that something was not right. The ultrasound technician did not talk to her and then the obstetrician's nurse took her into a small room with a sofa. The doctor then came in and informed her that her baby has no heartbeat. A trip to the hospital verified that the child had died. She is then told that she needed to go into labor right then and there to prevent injury to herself. Having already endured the loss of her child she was forced to endure the pain of going through labor to deliver a stillborn child. After this event the parents filed a malpractice claim against the physician, requesting damages relating to the death of their child, including emotional distress. Following the filing of the case against the doctor, the law firm that helped themother and father reported that they obtained a settlement of $650,000 on behalf of the parents.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting birth injury medical malpractice cases. You can learn more about stillbirth and other birth injury matters by visiting the websites
