Personal Injury Lawyers in New York

Neonatal Emergencies - birth injury lawyer Queens County and surrounding counties

Parents of a newborn baby are rarely prepared for the presence of a medical emergency involving their baby. Often times these neonatal emergencies can result in a baby leaving the hospital without any permanent consequence if the neonatal emergency is timely and properly diagnosed and treated by the doctors and nurses.

Pneumothorax is a neonatal emergency that requires medical treatment involving a tube drainage of the lung. The signs and symptoms of pneumothorax include cyanosis and respiratory distress such as diminished breath sounds. A chest x-ray is used to make the evaluation.

Upper airway obstruction is a neonatal emergency that often shows itself with a baby's struggling respirations. The evaluation involves a nasogastric tube to determine patency of the nasal passages. The treatment is suction, orophagyngeal airway, and intubation if necessary.

Intestinal obstruction is a neonatal emergency that has signs and symptoms such as vomiting, abdominal distention, and failure to pass meconium. Abdominal x-rays and sometimes a barium enema is used to make the diagnosis. Intestinal obstruction requires surgery.

Hirschsprung's disease is a neonatal emergency that presents with abdominal distention, bilious vomiting and failure to pass stool. Evaluation can involve barium enema and rectal biopsy. Surgery is necessary.

Fetal circulation persistence, meconium aspiration and other forms of respiratory failure present as respiratory distress and cyanosis. The evaluation includes blood gases and chest and abdominal x-rays. This neonatal emergency requires respirator treatment including oxygenation.

Each of these neonatal emergencies require doctors and nurses to detect and respond to on an emergency basis because left untreated these medical emergencies can cause a newborn to suffer brain damage, or grave intestinal destruction, and the lifetime disability or death. Since almost all babies are born in hospitals where medical help is available and lifetime injury preventable, it is a terrible shame when medicine does not provide ordinary care by responding to a baby's needs. We have not seen improvement in the medical care of neonatal emergencies over the past 25 years as lawyers were presenting parents of these children who suffer massive economic damages and loss of liberty and quality of life when medical malpractice causes an unnecessary delay in treatment because of lack of attention to a parent's concern about their baby after the birth, or nurses and doctors do not carefully watch over the baby after birth.

If your family has been involved in suspected birth injury to your child, please contact the Malpractice Law Offices of Silberstein, Awad & Miklos, serving clients in Nassau and Suffolk Counties and Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens.

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