Vacuum Extraction Birth Injury – Suction Device Injuries

Learn More:

What is Birth Injury? – Birth Injury Overview

What is Birth-Related Injury? – Birth-Related Medical Malpractice

What are “Damages” in Medical Malpractice?

Video Transcript

Timestamps
0:00 Intro
0:20 What is Vacuum Extraction?
1:00 Suction Device Injuries from Vacuum Extraction
1:43 Injuries We Look For
2:11 Was Your Baby Injured?

Hey everyone, my name’s Francois Blaudeau. I’m an OB/GYN doctor and lawyer here in Birmingham, AL., part of the LawMD team, and I specialize in birth injury-related cases. I’m today here to talk to you about vacuum extraction injuries.

0:20 What is Vacuum Extraction?

What’s vacuum extraction? Well, that’s where the doctor puts a type of suction cup on the baby’s head to try to help the baby deliver through the vagina.

So with the vacuum extraction delivery, the obstetrician places a vacuum on top of the baby’s head. It looks like a big cup. It’s usually made out of plastic or silicone, and it applies the baby’s head and a vacuum is created with negative pressure that allows that cup to kind of hold the baby’s head. And then the doctor assists the mother as she pushes while pulling on the baby’s head with this vacuum.

1:00 Suction Device Injuries from Vacuum Extraction

And so as you can imagine, if the vacuum is not placed in the right place, that can cause a problem and cause a potential birth injury. Also, if the vacuum is placed in a way where the doctor puts a lot of traction on that vacuum, sometimes that can cause shearing forces that can cause a brain bleed inside the brain. So by pulling too hard with the vacuum, you can get shearing issues and small bridging blood vessels up under the dura can tear and you can develop a subarachnoid bleed or subdural bleed related to vacuum extraction.

1:43 Injuries We Look For

As physicians, we always look at the indications. You know, should a vacuum have been used, was it properly placed, what level of pressure did the doctor use when applying the negative pressure on the vacuum, how many times the doctor pulled on the vacuum to get the baby out, these kinds of issues.

2:11 Was Your Baby Injured?

And so if you feel like your baby has been born with a significant issue related to a vacuum extraction, it may be that the baby suffered a bleed or suffered an injury with the vacuum placement, and how the physician placed the vacuum and how strong the physician pulled on the device.

So if you think you have an injury like that to your child and you would like us to review the records, please reach out to us at LawMD. We’ll be glad to look at it and let you know what we think. Thanks.