Who should have delivered the baby?
A mother’s prenatal care was managed by her family practitioner (FP). The mother went to the FP for induction of labor, but it was unsuccessful. Three days later, the baby was delivered by the FP and began having seizures a few minutes after birth. The child is quadriplegic and has severe cerebral palsy.
PARENTS’ CLAIM:
The FP was negligent in managing labor and delivery. She should have called an ObGyn to manage the labor. She failed to monitor fetal heart-rate tracings and failed to order an emergency cesarean delivery. The FP mismanaged the baby’s condition upon delivery and seizures started.
PHYSICIAN’S DEFENSE:
The FP properly managed the delivery and postdelivery complications. The brain injury had nothing to do with the birth; it was instead caused by a stroke disorder that occurred 3 to 7 days before delivery.
VERDICT:
A Minnesota defense verdict was returned.
Undiagnosed H1N1 influenza (swine flu) during pregnancy; mother and child die: $16.7M verdict
At 7 months’ gestation, a 27-year-old woman presented to a clinic on June 26 with a runny nose, congestion, cough, wheezing, chills, and sweats. The physician noted concern about proteinuria and that the patient reported chills and sweats, but that he was uncertain as to the symptoms’ cause. He recommended that she see her ObGyn immediately and report to the emergency department (ED) if symptoms worsened. The patient called her ObGyn to report having a temperature between 94˚F and 103˚F and taking acetaminophen. The next day, she saw a nurse practitioner in the ObGyn’s office who documented that the patient was not given antiviral medication.
On June 29, the patient was still feeling ill and went to the ED. Although a physician planned to discharge her, an ObGyn nurse recognized that the patient was too ill to leave and had her admitted.
The patient’s condition worsened overnight and she was transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU), where she was intubated and put on a ventilator. Medical notes read “as whether influenza was present was unclear…Tamiflu will be started, but the efficacy of it this late into a possible influenza episode is extremely questionable.” ICU physicians believed that the best option was to deliver the child. After the patient’s husband gave permission, the child was born by cesarean delivery. The mother never regained full consciousness and remained in a medically induced coma. She died on August 11 after the family decided to remove life support.
After being given the diagnosis of intrauterine hypoxia, the child remained in intensive care for several weeks and then was discharged home. Seven months later, the father found his daughter in bed, not breathing, which physicians believed was an episode of sudden infant death syndrome. The father performed CPR and rushed her to the hospital. Physicians tried twice to take the child off the ventilator, but she could not breathe without assistance. On February 21, life support was removed and the child died.
ESTATES’ CLAIM:
The clinic and its physician were negligent for failing to recognize that the mother had influenza; she presented with classic flu symptoms during a worldwide pandemic. In the several months before the patient’s visit, the clinic had received notices from health authorities alerting medical professionals to the dangers of H1N1 influenza, or Swine Flu. The clinic also had received, before the patient’s visit, information warning of an elevated risk of H1N1 to pregnant women, with instructions to administer oseltamivir phosphate (Tamiflu) to any pregnant woman suspected of having influenza.
DEFENDANTS’ DEFENSE:
The clinic and physician denied negligence, claiming that treatment of the mother was appropriate.
VERDICT:
A $16.7 million Washington verdict was returned.