Erb’s Palsy vs. Klumpke’s Palsy: Causes, Symptoms, and Legal Rights

Matt Williams:
Brachial plexus is the network of nerves that innervate the muscles in your hands, in your elbows, in your shoulders, and it comes out of your neck. During the labor and delivery process, sometimes babies get stuck in the birth canal. There's a series of maneuvers that delivering physicians can use in order to relieve the impaction of the shoulder against the pubic bone. Those maneuvers are supposed to prevent any permanent injury to the baby. However, sometimes when the doctors are doing those maneuvers, they end up putting too much force or traction on the head and neck of the baby. If you can imagine, if the baby is stuck in the birth canal and the head is out, and the doctors start to pull down on the baby's head and neck or start to pull up on the baby's head or neck, what can happen is the nerves that are in the baby's neck can stretch like this because of the forces that the physician applies. Now, doctors are trained not to apply excessive force. They're trained not to apply significant force. But sometimes, for whatever reason, either perhaps they panic or perhaps they are not ready for the obstetrical emergency, they end up applying too much force.

And What can happen is if you apply too much force, it can essentially rip out or tear those brachial plexus nerves. Then if that happens, they don't really regenerate. It's a permanent injury. Babies, as they get older, you start to see children not have normal function of their hands or their arms. They can't lift their arm up, they can't hold items. They really have a non-functioning hand and arm, which throughout the course of your lifetime can cause significant deficits and it can prevent people from doing a lot of activities they normally would do if their hands were functioning normally. There's really two types of injuries to the brachial plexus nerves. One is called an Erb’s Palsy, which is a rupture or avulsions of the upper nerves in your neck. The other is what's called a Klumpke’s Palsy, and that's a rupture or injury to the lower nerves of your neck. Depending upon which nerves are affected, your baby might be diagnosed with an Erb’s Palsy or a Klumpke’s Palsy. There's really no difference between the two types of palsies. They just describe different set of nerves that are damaged in the neck following a birth injury.

It's been my experience that Erb’s palsy is more common than Klumpke’s palsy. That's really because if you think about it, when the physician is applying traction to the head and neck of the baby, the first nerves that are affected would be the nerves at the top of the neck, and that's the Erb’s palsy. It's very unlikely that you're going to have an injury to the lower nerves, which would be a Klumpke’s palsy, without first injuring those nerves above it. In my experience, Erb’s palsy is more common than Klumpke’s palsy. If you have a child or if you have heard of a situation where they're diagnosed with Erb's palsy or Klumpke's palsy at birth, there may be a situation where that injury could have been prevented. It would be a good idea for an attorney look at the medical records to see what they did, what the doctors did under the circumstances, to see if the injury could have ultimately been prevented.