Posted on 10/14/2012 12:42:06 PM PDT by presidio9
A Missouri couple filed a lawsuit Sept. 28 against four defendants for a birth gone horribly wrong. The New York Daily News reports Friday that Arteisha Betts and Travis Ammonette of Florissant, Mo., claim their newborn son, Kaden Travis Ammonette, died while in the birth canal. The baby's head was allegedly decapitated from its neck when the doctor tried pulling the baby out of the birth canal.
* The media report claims court documents reveal Dr. Susan Moore told the couple in February 2011 their baby would have to be born with a Caesarian section because his abdomen was too large. The delivering doctor allegedly refused to perform a Caesarian and instead chose for a vaginal birth. The attending doctor, Gilbert Webb, then supposedly did not allow the couple to go to another hospital.
* Courthouse News Service states Betts and Ammonette went to St. John's Mercy Hospital on March 22, 2011, when the mother started having contractions. She was 28 weeks and five days into her pregnancy.
* The lawsuit alleges Kaden's head came out normally, but the abdomen got stuck in the birth canal. The doctor then allegedly tried traction on the baby's head and then the head became separated from the cervical spine.
* The story gets worse. At the point, the plaintiffs say blood from the baby's neck splattered into the labor and delivery room in plain sight of the mother and father. The couple then claims the doctor did the unthinkable --Webb supposedly pushed the baby back into the uterus and ordered an emergency Caesarian section.
* To make matters even more disgusting, the couple claims Webb then started performing the emergency procedure on the mother before she was sedated. This caused Betts "significant physical pain and suffering," according to
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Story doesn’t make sense.
Major missing facts.
Just sayin’.
HERE’S A TRUE STORY — called Zavanelli procedure.
First, this is a horrifying place to be for any Family doctor or obstetrician — one of their worst nightmares.
Sometimes the head is delivered but the shoulders block further delivery. It is called “shoulder dystocia”. This is an extremely frightening situation — a true emergency — no time to call in help. There are limited procedures — one is to break the clavicle (collar bone) thus collapsing the shoulder.
I know of a devout excellent Catholic obstetrician who had a full term mother who had shoulder dystocia in the middle of the night. He could not deliver the body.
As you can understand, it is an total emergency with just minutes to spare. Instead of breaking the shoulder, my friend pushed the head back up & delivered the baby by C-Section. Baby did fine. It was written up as an article in the medical magazines as an alternative to breaking the clavicle. His name was Dr. Zavanelli — you can google it — it is called the Zavanelli procedure.
http://www.aafp.org/afp/2004/0401/p1707.html
Bad things sometimes happen, and it might be no ones “fault”. Of course, Lawyers will protest to that...
I agree. It isn't a good idea to rush to judgement based only on the sensationalized information in the article, most of which are only allegations from the lawsuit.
http://books.google.com/books/about/Beck_s_obstetrical_practice_and_fetal_me.html?id=3t9sAAAAMAAJ A lady at work bought this book years ago and placed in the library. It’s been taken out thousands of times since by folks with a new one on the way. Everything is here ~ what the doctor did is described in detail.
“At 28 weeks..... definitely some other problem involved. What we have here is a doctor making an heroic effort that didn’t work.”
There’s way more to this story! At 28 weeks, with an abdomen bigger than it’s head!!! And obviously, if the doctor couldn’t get the baby out of the birth canal, his only choice is to try to get it back in the uterus and do a C-Section. If lives are at risk, tough luck if the sedation/anesthesia hasn’t kicked in. A 28 week premie with a huge abdomen doesn’t sound like it would have had a very good outcome even with a C-Section. I’ll stop my rant there, having had 14+ years in NICU, closely tied with L&D.
I have heard of such situations as you describe. I’m glad your mom and sis made it through OK.
I agree. There are some quack doctors out there, but this story is pretty bizarre. Of course, there will be more quacks practicing, particularly in smaller towns, when Obamacare takes full effect.
Usually doctors are too eager to do a c-section because of the threat of malpractice suits. This is certainly different.
Very sad story, of course. Praying for the family.
I believe they said there was some kind of mass (tumor or something) on the baby’s abdomen. Still, at 28 weeks, that must have been some huge mass.
The information presented is from the plaintiff’s lawsuit...very intentionally one sided and intended to present issues in the worst light....
The end result was horrific but I’m not ready to throw the Doctor and the attending team under the bus yet although it looks bad, would like to hear the other side of the story first....
This may have been a heroic effort on the medical teams part for a difficult if not impossible delivery....
Prayers for the child and the family....
Dr. Gilbert Webb is white.
I watched the births of my sons and recently a grand-daughter. All her grandparents were there at her birth and after a struggle followed by the loudest cry any of us had ever heard, she and her mother and the nurses and doctors received a well deserved round of applause.
There was a C-section team standing by right there as the mother gave it her all ~ and out come the baby.
You work there ~ I can only imagine the drama going on forever and a day but it has to be intense.
Maybe it is medical malpractice, but we are far from hearing the rest of the story.
First of all I don’t understand why such young people would need fertility treatments. Secondly, for people who were getting fertility treatments it really doesn’t sound like they were getting very good care, at all.
Babies that are that premature are fragile, enourmously fragile. A friend lost a baby that young because it sustained traumatic damage coming through the birth canal the actural contractions caused the baby to be toally bruised. this baby sounds like it was what used to be called a monster. A baby who has multiple abnormalities and was delivered to the best of the doctor’s ability. This baby was severely broken and may have had issues that were incompatable with life.
Delivery suite horror story: Doctors ‘killed baby during birth and tried to cover it up with a Caesarean’
The better hospitals and doctors are up north.
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