Was your baby diagnosed with metabolic acidosis? This condition may be attributable to something that went wrong during labor and delivery.
What Is Metabolic Acidosis?
Metabolic acidosis is a condition in which too much acid builds up in the blood, often because the body isn’t getting enough oxygen. In newborns, it’s typically identified through umbilical cord blood gas testing performed immediately after delivery, which measures the baby’s pH level and base excess or base deficit.
A low pH combined with a significant base deficit is one of the clearest clinical indications that a baby experienced oxygen deprivation during labor or delivery. Medical professionals consider a pH below 7.0 along with a base deficit of 12 or more to be a strong marker of severe metabolic acidosis.
Why Metabolic Acidosis Matters in Birth Injury Cases
Metabolic acidosis isn’t an injury. Rather, it’s evidence of what was happening inside the baby’s body during the moments leading up to delivery. Prolonged oxygen deprivation severe enough to cause metabolic acidosis can also cause hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), a type of brain injury that can lead to cerebral palsy and other conditions.
Since cord blood gas results are typically documented immediately after birth, they can provide an unbiased data point that doctors and Houston birth injury attorneys can use to evaluate what happened during delivery. A severe metabolic acidosis finding may point toward a preventable delay in intervention.
Common Causes of Preventable Oxygen Deprivation
Several actions and omissions during labor and delivery can trigger oxygen deprivation that produces metabolic acidosis. These include:
- Failure to properly monitor fetal heart rate patterns during labor
- Delayed response to signs of fetal distress
- Delayed decision to perform a necessary emergency cesarean section
- Improper use of Pitocin or other labor-inducing medications
- Unaddressed umbilical cord complications, such as prolapse or compression,
- Mismanaged shoulder dystocia or other delivery complications
The damage caused by a lack of oxygen depends on how severe and how prolonged the deprivation was. In mild cases, a baby may recover fully with no lasting effects. In more severe cases, oxygen deprivation can lead to permanent brain damage and associated conditions like cerebral palsy, developmental disabilities, seizure disorders, and more. Some children also develop motor function difficulties, muscle tone abnormalities, or speech and language delays that require extensive therapies to address. In the most severe cases, prolonged and untreated hypoxia can be fatal.
Contact an Experienced Birth Injury Attorney for Help
If your baby was diagnosed with metabolic acidosis and later showed signs of brain injury, cerebral palsy, or developmental delays, you may have a birth injury claim against the healthcare providers responsible for labor and delivery.
Your attorney can work with medical experts in obstetrics and neonatology to determine whether the medical team responded appropriately to the signs of distress, or whether a delay in care contributed to your child’s injury.
Contact us today Hampton & King for a free consultation to discuss what happened during your child’s delivery and whether you have a right to take legal action.