Infant Birth Hypoxia...
Could It Be Prevented?
Lack of oxygen at birth can frequently be avoided by good obstetric and neonatal care. You may want to investigate what happened to your baby and whether his or her injuries could have been prevented. E-mail or call us if we can be of assistance.
Infants suffering a lack of oxygen at birth who are then exposed to a new therapy involving cooling of either the infant's head or whole body have a greater chance of reducing their risk of death or permanent brain damage, according to recent studies.1
Prior to this treatment, infants who had suffered from a lack of oxygen at birth (also known as "perinatal asphyxia" or "hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE)") had a high risk of death; those who survived had a substantial risk of permanent disability.2
More and more studies are showing, however, that except in the most severely affected infants, selective head cooling soon after birth could be a clinically feasible treatment in reducing the risk of disabling neurodevelopmental injuries to the basal ganglia area of the brain as a result of lack of oxygen at birth.3
For example, in one of the first pilot studies of whole body hypothermia involving 65 severely oxygen-deprived infants in the NICU, the overall death rate was 37%. However, among survivors with known developmental outcomes at 12 months, there were fewer infants with severely abnormal outcomes in the hypothermia group.4
In a more recent study, infants were treated with hypothermia before six hours of age. The treatment was continued for seventy-two hours. Death or moderate-to-severe disability occurred in 45 of 102 infants (44%) in the hypothermia group, compared to 64 of 103 infants (62%) in the control group. In the hypothermia and control groups respectively, the rates of cerebral palsy were 19 and 30%; the rates of blindness were 7 and 14%; and the rates of hearing impairment were 4 and 6%. The total reduction in death or moderate disability at 18 months for the hypothermia group was 18%.5
Although the cooling therapy is not a "silver bullet" that can prevent all harm in infants who have suffered a lack of oxygen at birth, and the overall benefit (based on current studies) appears rather small, it clearly reduces the rates of death and disability.
The American Heart Association has concluded that there is presently an insufficient amount of data to recommend routine use of hypothermia and that further clinical trials are necessary.6 However, if you or a loved one have recently delivered an infant who suffered a lack of oxygen at birth (axphyxiation), you may wish to ask your doctor if the baby is a candidate for treatment with hypothermia.
If you would like more information about your legal rights concerning a medical malpractice claim for Birth Hypoxia, please contact Carol Nelson Shepherd, Esq., Dan Weinstock, Esq., or Carey Chopko, Esq., by telephone at 888-583-4942 or by filling out the form on this page. We at Feldman Shepherd have a team of attorneys and paralegals experienced in helping brain-injured children and their parents.
1New England Journal of Medicine, October 13, 2005.
2New England Journal of Medicine, October 13, 2005 (editorial).
3Lancet, 2005; 365:663-370.
4Pediatric Neurology, 2004.06.014, pp.11-17; pp. 18-24.
5New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 353, pp. 1574-1584.
6Circulation 2005; 112; 188-95.
7Encephalopathy, basal ganglia, cerebral ischemia, hypothermia baby, infant mortality, ischemia hypoxemia, newborn hypothermia, systemic hypothermia, whole body hypothermia, injury at birth
