What Are the Most Common Types of Birth Injury?
The birth of a child should be a joyous occasion but a birth injury can have lasting complications and change the course of a family’s lives. Birth injuries include any physical injury that a baby may suffer during birth. While some injuries are minor and unavoidable, some are caused by the negligence of a medical professional.
Attorneys Gary A. Zucker and Guy S. Regev review the details of birth injuries to determine if medical malpractice occurred, helping to hold negligent parties responsible even for the most common types of birth injuries. If you live in or around Brooklyn, NY, and would like the attorneys of Zucker & Regev, P.C. to review your case, we welcome you to schedule a consultation.
Common Types of Birth Injuries
Birth injuries may be minor and resolve on their own. Birth injuries may also be serious, requiring surgery or other medical intervention and can leave a child with lifelong complications.
While there are many types of birth injuries, the following are some of the most common our Brooklyn attorneys would like to draw attention to.
Brachial Palsy
Brachial palsy is a condition in which a group of nerves in the upper spine, neck, shoulder, arm, and hand, which make up the brachial plexus, become injured during delivery, resulting in the injured baby being unable to rotate or flex their arm.
Brachial plexus injuries can happen when a baby’s shoulder becomes stuck inside the mother’s pelvis during birth, referred to as shoulder dystocia. Many children recover after a brachial plexus birth injury but in serious cases, shoulder dystocia can result in permanent arm paralysis.
Facial Paralysis
Facial paralysis can occur during labor as a result of pressure on the baby’s face from the mother’s body or from forceps or vacuum extraction. Pressure on the baby’s face can injure the nerves, causing bruising to the nerves or sometimes tearing them.
Facial paralysis is most apparent when the baby cries. There will be no movement on the side of the face that was injured.
Oxygen Deprivation and Cerebral Palsy
Oxygen deprivation during delivery can lead to brain damage. In some cases this leads to cerebral palsy, a condition affecting the development of motor skills and muscle tone. Oxygen deprivation during birth can also cause seizures and other developmental issues.
Oxygen deprivation may occur as a result of a medical professional’s failure to monitor the infant during delivery, delaying delivering, or failure to properly respond to signs of fetal distress.
Intracranial Hemorrhages
During delivery a baby may suffer an intracranial hemorrhage, also called a “brain bleed.” Brain bleeds can have long term effects on cognitive and behavioral development.
Bleeding may happen in the brain as a result of prolonged labor, breech delivery position, the use of forceps and vacuums, or improper pulling or twisting of the baby’s head during delivery.
Contact Zucker & Regev, P.C.
Although birth injuries may be unavoidable and occur through no fault of anyone involved in the delivery process, sometimes injuries are a direct result of preventable medical errors.
Failure to diagnose or respond to fetal distress, the incorrect use of delivery tools, and other errors can all lead to birth injuries with serious and long lasting damage.
If you believe your child’s birth injury was caused by medical malpractice, schedule a consultation online with our birth injury lawyers or call our Brooklyn office at (718) 624-1211.
