Cerebral palsy is a serious disorder that can have a devastating impact on a family. It is a permanent illness that is caused by various forms of brain damage, either before birth or in infancy. It is usually diagnosed in the early months or years of a child’s life, most often after the parents identify missed growth milestones or physical challenges that the baby suffers from. As a child with cerebral palsy gets older, they may experience additional symptoms such as low bone density, frequent bone breaks, and emotional trauma.
If your child suffered a birth injury or was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, you will want to act quickly. You must determine the cause and type of your child’s ailment, identify which parts of the brain sustained damaged, and how severely they were damaged—all of which is needed to initiate treatment quickly.
Tallahassee families can contact the Birth Injury Lawyers Group today for assistance from a Tallahassee cerebral palsy lawyer with handling their child’s case. Call our team at (800) 222-9529 to get started.
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Types and Causes of Cerebral Palsy
The cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that controls movement. It is comprised of gray and white matter, with the former lying toward the outer parts of the brain. The skull of a newborn is not solid, instead consisting of sheets of bone that can move and slide against one another. This condition is perfectly natural and helps the baby exit the mother’s body during delivery. However, because these bones are fragile and can move, it is easy for the outer portions of the brain to sustain an injury during birth.
A baby can suffer from natural brain abnormalities that affect the brain’s gray matter, or the delivery team might apply pressure or pull on the baby’s head to facilitate extraction from the mother and damage the gray matter that way. This is especially common with complications during birth and emergencies, such as when a baby becomes stuck inside the mother and cannot come out on its own. The delivery team may resort to the use of forceps or extractors to remove the baby by pulling on its head.
Once a brain injury occurs, the damage will likely not heal completely. The best that can be done is helping the child learn to cope with their disabilities and provide them with the treatment and care needed to live as full and independent a life as possible.
Getting to this point first requires an understanding of the type of cerebral palsy your child has. The different types of cerebral palsy are:
- Spastic cerebral palsy: This is the most common type of cerebral palsy. It leads to stiff muscles and jerky movements.
- Athetoid (or dyskinetic) cerebral palsy: This impacts speech and coordinated movement, as well as the ability to hold objects. It may also affect posture.
- Ataxic cerebral palsy: This leads to poor coordination and abnormal muscle tone. The affected individual may also have issues with balance.
There are various treatments available in Florida for cerebral palsy, but these can only help your child live with or partially overcome their disabilities. Cerebral palsy is permanent, but there is always hope that, with the right treatment at the right time, the patient can live a somewhat independent life and manage their disabilities on their own.
It is unfortunate that cerebral palsy occurs. Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cerebral palsy is considered the most common childhood motor disability in the United States, and many families live with it. If your child has any of the symptoms above or was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, you can call the Birth Injury Lawyers Group at (800) 222-9529 to speak with a team member about your situation.
Our Tallahassee cerebral palsy lawyers can help determine if you have a viable malpractice claim under Florida Statute § 766.102. They can identify the type of injury that your child sustained and if medical errors caused those injuries.
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Medical Errors
There are many factors, some preventable, that can lead to brain damage and cerebral palsy. Examples include an insufficient supply of oxygen to the baby, infections, gene mutations, and internal bleeding.
While issues such as genetic mutations may be out of the hands of your child’s care team, other issues such as infections may have been preventable. This is especially true if your child’s doctor could and should have performed screening tests to identify a health issue but failed to do so.
Additional ways that medical errors can happen include administering an incorrect dose of medications to the mother, such as labor-inducing drugs, misreading results from tests, and incorrectly using assistive devices such as forceps while delivering the baby. A failure to perform emergency procedures such as a C-section or delaying the diagnosis of a medical problem can also be classified as malpractice.
A Tallahassee cerebral palsy lawyer can identify whether a medical error occurred during your child’s birth and if the error causally relates to their cerebral palsy diagnosis.
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The Benefits of Legal Assistance From a Cerebral Palsy Lawyer
Managing a cerebral palsy diagnosis can be life-shattering for the family, not to mention the child who will be deprived of a normal life. The Birth Injury Lawyers Group works to ensure families understand the issues they face. Our Tallahassee cerebral palsy lawyers also help families seek compensation for the damages they unfairly suffer when medical negligence or avoidable injuries were caused by a member of a patient’s care team.
In addition to this, we help Florida families manage their child’s injuries by:
- Helping them identify when the birth injuries that led to cerebral palsy occurred, as well as the extent and severity of those injuries.
- Determining the type of cerebral palsy that they are dealing with.
- Performing a thorough case evaluation to determine the strengths or weaknesses of their case.
- Obtaining interview evidence from the medical team involved in the delivery of the baby to ascertain whether some form of negligence occurred.
Successfully treating cerebral palsy requires an understanding of its causes and initiating the right treatments as early as possible. For assistance with your cerebral palsy case from a Tallahassee cerebral palsy lawyer, call the Birth Injury Lawyers Group at (800) 222-9529 today to speak with a member of our team. We only collect legal fees if you win your case, so call today to get started.
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