CASE Failure to perform cesarean delivery1–4
A 19-year-old woman (G1P0) received prenatal care at a federally funded health center. Her pregnancy was normal without complications. She presented to the hospital after spontaneous rupture of membranes (SROM). The on-call ObGyn employed by the clinic was offsite when the mother was admitted.
The mother signed a standard consent form for vaginal and cesarean deliveries and any other surgical procedure required during the course of giving birth.
The ObGyn ordered low-dose oxytocin to augment labor in light of her SROM. Oxytocin was started at 9:46 am and labor was uneventful until 1:20 pm when fetal heart monitoring showed deceleration of the baby’s heart rate. At 1:30 pm, oxytocin was discontinued because the fetal heart rate was nonreassuring. When the ObGyn arrived at the patient’s bedside at 1:49 pm, he ordered the oxytocin to be restarted because of irregular contractions. Oxytocin was given from 1:50 pm until delivery at 3:21 pm. During delivery, the ObGyn applied a Kiwi vacuum 3 times. Despite evidence of fetal distress, the ObGyn left the room several times.
Upon delivery, the infant was flaccid and not breathing. His Apgar scores were 2, 3, and 6 at 1, 5, and 10 minutes, respectively, and the cord pH was 7. The neonatal intensive care (NICU) team provided aggressive resuscitation.
At the time of trial, the 18-month-old boy was being fed through a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube and had a tracheostomy that required periodic suctioning. The child was not able to stand, crawl, or support himself, and will require 24-hour nursing care for the rest of his life.
LAWSUIT. The parents filed a lawsuit in federal court for damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act (see “Notes about this case,”). The mother claimed that she had requested a cesarean delivery early in labor when FHR tracings showed fetal distress, and again prior to vacuum extraction; the ObGyn refused both times.
The ObGyn claimed that when he noted a category III tracing, he recommended cesarean delivery, but the patient refused. He recorded the refusal in the chart some time later, after he had noted the neonate’s appearance.
The parents’ expert testified that restarting oxytocin and using vacuum extraction multiple times were dangerous and gross deviations from acceptable practice. Prolonged and repetitive use of the vacuum extractor caused a large subgaleal hematoma that decreased blood flow to the fetal brain, resulting in irreversible central nervous system (CNS) damage secondary to hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. An emergency cesarean delivery should have been performed at the first sign of fetal distress.
The defense expert pointed out that the ObGyn discussed the need for cesarean delivery with the patient when fetal distress occurred and that the ObGyn was bedside and monitoring the fetus and the mother. Although the mother consented to a cesarean delivery at time of admission, she refused to allow the procedure.
The labor and delivery (L&D) nurse corroborated the mother’s story that a cesarean delivery was not offered by the ObGyn, and when the patient asked for a cesarean delivery, he refused. The nurse stated that the note added to the records by the ObGyn about the mother’s refusal was a lie. If the mother had refused a cesarean, the nurse would have documented the refusal by completing a Refusal of Treatment form that would have been faxed to the risk manager. No such form was required because nothing was ever offered that the mother refused.
The nurse also testified that during the course of the latter part of labor, the ObGyn left the room several times to assist other patients, deliver another baby, and make an 8-minute phone call to his stockbroker. She reported that the ObGyn was out of the room when delivery occurred.