Forceps Delivery Injuries During Childbirth

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Video Transcript

Timestamps
0:00 Intro
0:34 What Are Forceps?
1:02 Common Forcep Delivery Injuries

Ok guys, we’re going to talk about forcep injuries. This is Francois Blaudeau, MD, JD, lawyer, doctor, from Birmingham, AL, part of the LawMD team. And I’m a specialist in obstetrics and gynecology, and delivered over 9,000 babies, and been a lawyer for 23 years, and tried a lot of cases involving birth injuries. And I’m here today to talk to you about forcep injuries.

0:34 What Are Forceps?

So what are forceps? Forceps are these metal spoons that doctors sometimes use to help deliver a baby when the baby’s kind of stuck in the birth canal, and the mother’s too tired to push the baby out. And forceps when applied correctly work pretty well. And they’re relatively safe to use. But if forceps are applied incorrectly, they can cause significant damage to a baby. 

1:02 Common Forcep Delivery Injuries

And usually, that injury is a skull fracture or a pressure on the brain that causes bleeding internally like a subdural hematoma, or a subchorionic hematoma, and so general trauma to the brain.

And forceps are applied on the baby’s head, usually, they come in on the side of the baby’s head, and I could do this move and pull out the baby’s head that way.

But if the doctor puts the forceps over the face and tries to pull, the doctor can cause injuries to the orbit, injuries to the nose, to the face. And if the doctor puts too much rotational pull on the baby’s head, the shearing can cause bleeding inside the brain. If the doctor puts too much stress on the forcep, then the doctor can cause a skull fracture.

Issues relating to forcep injuries tend to be more neurological, and sometimes they require intervention. So if there’s a brain bleed, if it’s a significant one, sometimes you got to relieve the pressure. Sometimes you can take the pressure off the brain to help with that.

If you believe your baby has been injured by forceps, and you’ve been told there’s been a brain injury related to the baby that was born where forceps were used, it may be that the forces cause the brain injury. For those kinds of cases, you should consider getting the records and sending to us, and letting us look and see whether or not we think the injury was related to the forcep application. And whether the forcep application was correctly done, whether it was indicated, and whether or not we believe a breach in standard care occurred. 

So again, if you’ve had a baby that’s been injured by forceps, had some type of brain injury or a skull injury related to forcep application, please feel free to reach out to us. Let us look at the records, let us help you figure out whether or not the standard of care was followed. 

Thank you.