Handle With Care

I'm sure everyone's seen the headlines trumpeting Powerball-sized verdicts in medical liability cases involving children born with severe neurological impairment. I mean it's common knowledge that these injuries are always caused by lack of oxygen during the birth process, right?

It turns out that in most cases, common knowledge is wrong.

From this week's New York Times:

... The truth is far more complex, according to an important new report by a committee of experts in obstetrics, pediatrics, neurology and fetal-maternal medicine. Many conditions that occur during or even before pregnancy can lead to neurological damage to full-term babies.

The document, called Neonatal Encephalopathy and Neurologic Outcome, updates a version published in 2003 that focused on oxygen deprivation, or asphyxia, around the time of birth. The new report, which highlights significant advances in diagnosis and treatment in the decade since, was published by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Brain injuries affect about three in 1,000 babies born full-term in the United States, but only half of these cases are linked to oxygen deprivation during labor and delivery, according to the new report. And even in those instances, a problem that occurred long before birth might have exaggerated the effects of a reduced oxygen supply that would have not otherwise caused a lasting brain injury.

According to the 2003 report, fewer than 10 percent of children with cerebral palsy, the most severe such brain injury, showed signs of asphyxia at birth. Unless certain clear-cut symptoms are present then, brain abnormalities are probably not the result of a complication during labor or delivery, the new report states.

The other side of the coin is that because of the way these cases are handled and the monumental cost involved, not only monetary by the way, many folks feel they have little choice but to find a lawyer. Additionally, obstetricians' response has been predictable with C-Section rates amounting to about one in three births in an effort to avoid the courtroom.

Surely, there has to be a better way.