For years now, the conventional belief has been that a forceps delivery is more dangerous for newborn, than delivery through a vacuum pump or a C-section. A new study seeks to dispel that belief. According to the study, delivery through forceps is probably less dangerous for a newborn than vacuum deliveries or C-sections.

The research was led by obstetricians from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore. The researchers analyzed data involving more than 400,000 births to first-time mothers. They found that the babies that were delivered via forceps delivery were about 45% less likely to suffer birth trauma like seizures or bleeding in or around the brain, compared to those who were delivered by a vacuum delivery or a C-section.

Out of the more than 15,000 births in the study that were via forceps delivery, just .12% had a seizure at birth. For babies that were delivered by C-section or via vacuum deliveries, the rate was around .3%. Risks of other complications like subdural hemorrhage and intraventricular hemorrhage were even lower in forceps deliveries. However, cesarean sections were found to be linked to a lower risk of subdural hemorrhage, or bleeding around the brain.

The study does not offer Arizona medical malpractice lawyers any conclusive evidence about which type of delivery is safer. However, it does seem to challenge the traditional belief that forceps deliveries are much more dangerous than C-sections and vacuum deliveries. C-sections have become widely popular in the United States, and in 2007, approximately 1/3rd of all American births were through C-sections. According to the obstetricians, there does not seem to be enough evidence that these deliveries are safer than forceps deliveries.

There could be a simple reason why the risks of seizures are lower with forceps deliveries. Seizures occur because of a lack of oxygen supply to the brain, and it's easier to get a baby out of the mother using forceps, than it is by C-sections or vacuum pumps.

The high numbers of medical errors in hospitals that are part of the Medicare and Medicaid programs have been under scrutiny by Arizona medical malpractice lawyers since last month when a survey found that more than 15,000 patients on Medicare die in hospitals from medical errors every month. A new report finds that regional Medicare and Medicaid agencies are not doing a good enough job of reporting medical errors to accreditation agencies, and as a result, these errors are not being tracked and corrected.

According to an Office of the Inspector General report, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ regional agencies are not notifying accreditation agencies like the Joint Commission, when inspectors find adverse events in hospitals. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report analyzed 88 complaints against accredited hospitals filed with the Joint Commission. The report focused on the most serious “immediate jeopardy complaints.” The report says that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services notified the Joint Commission in only 28 out of those 88 sample complaints.

This means that in far too many cases, inspectors find serious medical errors in hospitals, but fail to report these to national accreditation agencies. Hospitals are not notified about these errors, and may continue making the same mistakes over and over again. The hospitals are not given a chance to learn from their errors, and continue to participate in Medicare and Medicaid programs. Hospitals may not be in a position to correct errors. Patients in these hospitals may be at a risk of adverse events because of the failure of error-tracking procedures.

The Joint Commission has praised the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report, and has said that it receives very little timely and reliable information from the regional Medicare and Medicaid agencies. Only some of the regional agencies send in information regularly.

Researchers at Washington University have discovered a protein that can help limit the extent of brain injury that occurs when a baby is deprived of oxygen during delivery. Such deprivation of oxygen can cause a condition called cerebral palsy. The researchers found that the protective protein called Nmnat1 can help reduce critical brain damage and limit the extent of cerebral palsy.

Arizona medical malpractice lawyers find a number of causes for oxygen deprivation in a baby during the delivery process. There may be complications from a spike in maternal blood pressure, and this typically happens because doctors fail to monitor maternal health. Doctors may fail to perform an emergency cesarean section, leading to the baby being forced through the birth canal. In such cases, there is a disruption in the supply of oxygen to the baby, causing brain damage with possibly long-term consequences. One of these long-term consequences is cerebral palsy, a condition that affects an individual’s mobility, movement and mental development.

The researchers found that Nmnat1 helps protect brain cells from damage, probably by blocking the effects of the neurotransmitter glutamate, which kills off healthy brain cells. The researchers examined the effects of Nmnat1 on mice that that had suffered oxygen and blood flow deprivation. They found that mice that had genetically-engineered higher levels of Nmnat1 had much lower brain damage to critical areas of the brain that are responsible for causing cerebral palsy, than the mice that did not.

Follow-up studies further found that the mice with the higher levels of Nmnat1 suffered minimal or no brain damage at all. Researchers are now concluding that introducing Nmnat1 doses could help prevent the loss of brain cells in a baby suffering from oxygen deprivation, and thereby block or limit cerebral palsy.

Arizona medical malpractice lawyers find scant attention is being paid to the prevention of medical injuries caused by misdiagnoses in hospitals, in spite of the fact that these errors are surprisingly frequent occurrences. According to a new study by QuantiaMD, nearly 50% of physicians surveyed found diagnostic errors in their practice at least once every month.

The report, titled Physician Perspectives on Preventing Diagnostic Errors, focused on 6,400 clinicians who were asked about their experiences with diagnostic errors. Nearly half of them, or 47%, said that they found these errors every month in their practice. However, more than 90% believed that these errors were at least partly preventable.

Most diagnostic errors seemed to be the result of physicians’ failure to consider other types of diagnostic possibilities and atypical patient presentations. Additionally, the risk of diagnostic errors also increases under external pressures. Doctors who order too many diagnostic tests may also run the risk of making errors.

In the survey, 64% of clinicians said that at least 10% of the mistakes they made had directly contributed to patient injury. Diagnoses of some types of conditions are at a higher risk for errors than other conditions. For instance, 54% of the clinicians reported errors in the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism, followed by bipolar disorder with 51% of the clinicians reporting errors in the diagnosis of this condition. These conditions were followed by appendicitis, breast cancer, myocardial infection, lung cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, heart failure, stroke, and other types of cancers.

Seventy-five percent of the doctors said that atypical patient representation was a factor in misdiagnoses, followed by a failure to consider other diagnoses, which accounted for 50% of errors. Other factors include inadequate patient history, insufficient follow-up on test results, and failure to account for a symptom, failure to order appropriate tests, inadequate physical examination, and failure to correctly interpret results.

A combination of factors, including lack of coordination and knowledge about side effects are responsible for the majority of adverse drug reactions that take place in hospitals every year. In fact, according to a new survey by Swedish researchers, not only are most of these adverse drug reactions entirely preventable, but many of them are life-threatening.

 The results of the study were recently presented at the International Pharmaceutical Federation’s annual conference. Researchers found that adult patients had a 2% chance of adverse event risks for medications, and of these adverse reactions, 51% were preventable. However, when it comes to older patients, more than 70% of adverse events were preventable.

According to the researchers, their findings showed that most adverse drug reactions in hospitals are caused due to lack of coordination between healthcare professionals. Medication errors are some of the most frequent kinds of errors that occur during shift changes, or when more than one medical professional is involved in a case. Additionally, patients can be unaware of the side effects or risks from the use of certain medications. Pharmaceutical companies may not always highlight certain side effects that need to be watched out for carefully. All of these factors increase the risk of adverse drug reactions.

Arizona medical malpractice lawyers also believe that part of the reason for these adverse drug events is the fact that many of them are so common that they can easily be concealed in a hospital environment. Researchers say it is important to create a hospital climate in which such errors are not hidden, or taken for granted. Additionally, the researchers believe that medical professionals need to be encouraged to report adverse drug events to prevent similar incidents in the future.