For malpractice at birth, a severely disabled child has since been awarded € 500,000 in compensation for pain. This was decided by the Oberlandesgericht Oldenburg in the case of an eight-year-old girl from Gütersloh in North Rhine-Westphalia. The child will be dependent on external help for life with severe brain damage, the court said.
The lamented clinic from the Osnabrück district as well as a doctor were additionally obliged to compensate the girl for her entire life for all pecuniary losses which have arisen from her gross treatment errors or which will arise in the future.
In its decision of Wednesday, the Higher Regional Court essentially upheld a first-instance judgment of the district court of Osnabrück. The compensation was appropriate in view of a serious medical malpractice, it was said. The judgment is not yet final.
Doctors confuse mother's heartbeat with that of the child
At the birth of the girl complications arose with the heartbeat. However, according to the court, this was not recognized over a period of more than ten minutes because the so-called CTG labor writer temporarily recorded no heartbeats from mother and child. When he did so again, the staff considered the mother's heartbeat signal to be that of the child and thought the situation was stable.
But actually it was the mother's heart sounds. When the mistake was noticed, it was already too late. The child suffered severe brain damage from oxygen deficiency.
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The doctors had to convince themselves otherwise of the condition of the child, the Oldenburg court justified the decision. The judges agreed with the opinion of the expert appointed by them, who had classified the events as a "gross error of treatment".
The doctors would not have been content in a delicate situation under any circumstances for a period of ten minutes with a meaningless CTG. You would have had to take other diagnostic measures, such as the vital signs of the child can additionally detect with a so-called feline electrode.
Previously, the district court Osnabrück had already recognized more errors. Therefore, after the birth, the resuscitation had not started immediately, there was no resuscitation bag ready, the mask ventilation was faulty and an ambulance had appeared ten minutes late.
Az. 5 U 108/18