Caesarean? Yes but also in equipped hospitals

March 19, 2012 - PRLog -- In Italy the caesarean birth is a very common practice; according to what has emerged after the report of the Commission of Inquiry on the mistakes in health departments, caesarean birth is practiced beyond the limits imposed by the Health World Organization and represents, more or less, the 38.8% of the total number of births in Italy.

This percentage, because of the substantial structural deficiencies of many public hospitals, causes every year a number of indemnification for health damages; in particular in the South of Italy, the professional and technological standards of many public hospitals are not adequate to such a delicate operation; numerous cases of penal proceedings against doctors and obstetricians for injuries and culpable homicide came out of it.

According to the Commission of Inquiry’s survey, the three regions on the top of this black list are Trentino Alto Adige, Campania and Sicily even if the list continues with regions nearly just from South Italy; even 70% of the medical structures examined have resulted to be inadequate to guarantee a minimum level of security and didn’t have the equipments necessary to make an intensive neonatal therapy. In 2011, 500 have been the cases of indemnifications requests, indemnifications for national health disservices or medical damages that have been analyzed or are under examination by the Commission of Inquiry. Among these cases, 104 are about facts happened during the birth and among these, 79 times the presumed error has caused the death of the fetus  or of the baby.

But what are the characteristics that make the difference between an equipped hospital and an unsuitable one? First of all in caesarian birth cases, the essential feature that limits the obstetrician complications, is the perfect integration between medical personnel and the obstetrician, that must work as an “equipe”, by means of a common language and customized procedures, able to deal with any emergency situations. In particular, the delivery room must be equipped like a real emergency ward, with personnel on duty 24 hours a day, gynecologist, neonatologist and anesthetist – resuscitator, in order to be ready to any kind of emergency it can occur.

Talking about risks that can regard the newborn, fundamental is the figure of the neonatologist who cooperates with the obstetrical in the equipe work, and also with the anesthetist; immediately after the birth he gives assistance to the baby. It must be underlined that, when talking about cardiopathic pregnant women, it is possible that occurs a decompensation - caused by a functional overload of the circulatory apparatus - and in this cases it is required also the presence of a cardiologist specialist.

It is evident that the most difficult thing, when talking about damages indemnifications, it is to prove that there is a professional responsibility ascribable to one of the professional that participated to the birth: the responsibility is unique and attributable just to the neonatologist each time that his opinion is autonomous respect to the other specialists’ one, while all the equipe is responsible in the event that there are some rough professional mistakes, not ascribable to the highly specialist work of the neonatologist.

The main difficulty of the bench, in these cases, is to establish the precise moment in which the medical mistake has been made and understand why it has caused the death of the pregnant woman, of the child or their lesions.

Article written by Serena Rigato with support from incidente stradale risarcimento (http://www.patavium.it/index.php/servizi/infortunistica-s...). For more information please visit rc auto online (http://www.patavium.it/index.php/servizi/assipoint.html), infortunistica stradale roma (http://www.patavium.it/index.php/regioni/reg-lazio.html) or increasing sales (http://www.prima-posizione.com/services-for-you/direct-email-marketing/)