A civil claim has been filed in the case of a horrifying birth injury case out of Missouri. The devastated parents of the child claim that the physicians at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center made outrageous medical errors when they refused to deliver the child via Caesarean section as promised.
Information from the claim shows that the couple had been told by one physician that C-section would be their best option because their child had an unusually large abdomen. When the woman began to go into labor in March 2011, the onsite doctor was unable to halt the contractions. The doctor then refused to allow the couple to go to another hospital to seek the C-section procedure. The physician was not the one who had provided the initial opinion in the case.
The couple alleges that they were coerced into vaginal delivery because of the physician’s medical opinion and refusal to allow the surgery. During the woman’s delivery, the doctor was able to deliver the baby’s head, but the child’s abdomen became stuck in the woman’s birth canal. Recognizing the severity of the situation, the doctor cut a significant episiotomy to hopefully allow the child’s body to deliver, but the abdomen remained stuck.
Reports show that the physician attempted to apply traction to the baby’s head, but he made a mistake and essentially dislocated the child’s head from his torso in full view of the father and other medical professionals in the room. The claim says that the physician then attempted to push the baby back into the woman’s birth canal and called for an emergency C-section.
Adding insult to injury in this case, the physician began to perform the emergency C-section before the woman had even received any anesthetic, which made the procedure extremely emotionally and physically traumatic for the patient. The surgery involved the physician removing the child’s head from its torso.
The case reads like a horror story, and it probably will result in an upsetting verdict for the physician, who made astonishingly negligent decisions in the delivery of this child.
Patients count on their doctor’s medical expertise when making informed decisions about their health care needs. If a physician’s actions or advice leads to the injury of death of the patients, the doctor, medical staff or hospital need to be held accountable for their actions. Consulting with a malpractice attorney following a horrific tragedy such as this one, will allow the grieving parents to understand what legal options are available to them.
Source: Courthouse News Service, “Infant death lawsuit laced with gory details,” Joe Harris, Oct. 2, 2012