What is Birth Asphyxia? Causes, Signs, and Medical Negligence
How does birth asphyxia cause permanent brain damage? Birth asphyxia occurs when a fetus experiences decreased oxygen due to disrupted blood flow from the placenta or umbilical cord. Doctors and nurses must closely monitor the fetal heart rate for distress patterns (decelerations). Failure to intervene by providing oxygen, turning the mother, or performing an emergency C-section can result in preventable and permanent brain injuries.
In this video, we cover:
Defining Birth Asphyxia: How disruptions like cord compression lead to oxygen deprivation [00:05].
Fetal Heart Rate Tracings: Understanding how doctors use monitoring devices to track baby's heart rate and mom's contractions [00:46].
Recognizing Red Flags: Identifying "decelerations" in the heart rate—including variable, prolonged, and late patterns—that signal a baby is in distress [01:06].
Medical Interventions: The steps nurses and doctors must take to restore oxygen, such as maternal positioning, slowing contractions, or performing an emergency C-section [01:33].
Preventing Permanent Injury: Why removing the fetus from a "hostile environment" quickly is critical to preventing permanent brain damage [01:47].
When clinicians fail to recognize or act on these warning signs, the resulting birth asphyxia can lead to life-altering injuries. If you believe your child suffered from oxygen deprivation during birth, a thorough review of the fetal heart rate patterns is a vital step in seeking answers.
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Transcript
[00:00:05.11] - Matthew L. Williams
You may have heard the term birth asphyxia. That's just a fancy term to mean, uh, decreased oxygen to the fetus. And a fetus can suffer birth asphyxia a variety of ways. You may know that a baby doesn't breathe on his or her own, uh, in the mom's uterus, but relies upon the placenta and the umbilical cord to get its oxygen through the blood flow from mom into the baby. So if that blood flow is ever disrupted, either due to cord compression or other things that can decrease that blood flow, then that can result in something called birth asphyxia.
[00:00:41.11] - Matthew L. Williams
And there's patterns that show up on the fetal heart rate tracing, which is a device that goes on mom and it measures the baby's heart rate. It also measures mom's contractions. And doctors look at the heart rate and they look at the contractions to make sure that the baby is getting adequate oxygenation. And if the baby is not getting adequate oxygenation, there's a distinctive heart rate pattern that shows up. These are called decelerations, and there's different patterns of decelerations.
[00:01:10.14] - Matthew L. Williams
There's variable, there's prolonged, there's late, there's early, they can be persistent. All of this information is available to the nurse and to the doctor, and they need to act on that because that can mean that the baby is not getting enough oxygen. And you don't want the baby to not get enough oxygen for too long during the labor and delivery process, because if that happens, then that can cause a permanent brain injury. And there's ways to avoid that from occurring. You can intervene and you can slow down the contractions.
[00:01:41.15] - Matthew L. Williams
You can give oxygen. You can turn mom. You can tell mom to stop pushing. And you also can do a C-section. And by doing a C-section, you're able to remove the fetus from that hostile environment And you want to do that before the baby suffers permanent injury from birth asphyxia.
