There are times when the root cause of a child’s cerebral palsy is medical negligence. In these instances, lawyers are sometimes able to argue successful lawsuits against the doctors, healthcare facilities or other personnel involved in the birth. Medical malpractice can cause cerebral palsy in many different specific ways, but in the vast majority of cases, the child ends up with cerebral palsy because of brain injuries that were caused by being deprived of oxygen during the birthing process.
1: Negligent Delivery
Sometimes, doctors, midwives and nurses delivered the child in a way that causes them to be strangulated. They may end up pinned in an odd position or they may be strangulated by their own umbilical cord because of the position in which they are delivered. When doctors and other healthcare professionals are competent and hold up their duties to their patients, they noticed these problems and take care of them before they cause injuries. When they are negligent, the child sometimes ends up with cerebral palsy due to being deprived of oxygen.
2: Infections
There are cases where children end up suffering a brain injury that causes cerebral palsy because of bacterial infections. Several lawsuits have argued that maternal infections, infected medical equipment, unsanitary conditions and other causes have led to children becoming infected, and subsequently, to the brain damage that leads to cerebral palsy symptoms. This, like any other cause of cerebral palsy, needs to be thoroughly investigated by medical professionals before it can be established to have been the case.
3: Delayed Delivery
There have been successful lawsuits by parents and children when the child was delivered late and when the doctor knew that there was an issue in the womb. In some cases, the child ends up suffering brain damage because of the conditions in the womb and, therefore, might have been spared that brain damage if they had been delivered in a more timely fashion. Jury awards have been handed out for cases that argued that a child should have been delivered earlier and, if they had been, would not have suffered the brain damage that they did.
A cerebral palsy attorney will be able to work with you to determine whether or not medical negligence played a part in your child’s cerebral palsy. Birth injuries are sometimes the result of completely unavoidable circumstances, so medical negligence is not always the reason behind cerebral palsy.