Category Archives: Birth Trauma
Brain Hibernation for Stroke Victims
According to Nursing Times, researchers have made recent claims that lowering the temperature of the brain could help victims of stroke by preventing death or disability from occurring. A group of these researchers are seeking to acquire funding for a trial in 21 countries in Europe, involving 80 hospitals. They hope to reach 1,500 patients. Lowering the temperature of the brain puts it into a state of hibernation, causing it to require less oxygen. This reduces damage and gives doctors more time to deal with damaged blood vessels. Currently, doctors use this same technique of putting the brain into hibernation for patients who have an elevated risk of brain damage, either due to cardiac health issues or due to birth defects. Dr. Malcom Macleod of the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh notes that one European dies from a stroke every 90 seconds. Approximately double that…
Read More »
Posted in Birth Trauma Tagged birth defect, brain injury, brain trauma, death, diability, stroke, study 1 Comment
Malpractice and Liability Reform
At this time the current medical malpractice system “provides benefits to too few deserving victims of physicians’ mistakes.” The reason this is the case is because most hospitals are considered nonprofit and are protected and insulated by charitable immunity statutes. This leaves one to wonder about the fact that these same hospitals are seeing revenue in the hundreds of millions, and the fact that these large institutions are not held accountable for medical errors that could potentially cause birth injuries or other health problems. The numerous medical errors that occur such as infections, poor procedures, and inadequate training and staffing lead to astronomical numbers of errors. The institute of Medicine has reported that 98,000 people die each year from medical errors. The legal process plays a valuable role in improving the quality of health care provided by physicians and hospitals by exposing the errors that are made, and allowing medical…
Read More »
Posted in Birth Trauma Tagged malpractice, medical care reform, physician mistake Comments Off on Malpractice and Liability Reform
Brain Cooling Used to Fight Birth Injury
An innovative new therapy is being used to fight birth injuries by cooling the baby’s body. It has been discovered that if a newborn’s body temperature is lowered to about 6 degrees below normal within six hours that it could decrease the damage done to the brain from birth injuries. The idea is that the low temperature causes the body to slip into whole body hypothermia. There have been many cases over the years when the protective benefits of cold temperatures for the brain have been noted. For example young children who have drowned in icy lakes and been resuscitated have recovered with little or no brain damage. Research has been done in the United States which has shown that cooling provides benefits to infants who were born deprived of oxygen. Babies whose body temperature was lowered to 92.3degrees within 6 hours and kept there for 72 hours have been…
Read More »
Posted in Birth Defects, Birth Trauma Tagged birth injury, Brain Cooling Comments Off on Brain Cooling Used to Fight Birth Injury
