Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers
HIE Birth Injury Attorneys in Alabama
As a new parent, it’s natural to worry about your baby’s wellbeing. We all hope to see our children grow up and be capable of achieving anything. Sadly, some parents’ worst fears will come true after finding out their child has suffered irreversible brain damage at birth.
Over 57,000 babies enter the world each year in Alabama. Of these births, an unfortunate few will undergo oxygen deprivation during the delivery process. Insufficient oxygenation during birth can make the baby’s brain vulnerable to hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) injuries.
A severe HIE injury at birth can dramatically shift the rest of a baby’s future before it even begins. Children with this kind of brain injury often suffer from long-term disabilities like epilepsy and cerebral palsy. It can also cause vision impairments, speech impairments, paralysis, and other complications that will require years of specialized, expensive treatments.
After a birth injury like HIE, many parents will accept that it was unavoidable. But after experience handling medical malpractice cases, our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers always believe in taking a second look.
Even the seemingly tiny delivery room errors can have a large impact on neonatal outcomes. Mistakes like missing fetal heart rate spikes or delaying an emergency C-section for too long can prolong the baby’s hypoxia.
If a medical professional’s errors kept the baby from having oxygen sooner, they may be responsible for the resulting injuries. Families can contact our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers to further investigate how their child’s lifechanging injuries occurred. We can hold negligent healthcare providers accountable to ensure no future family will have to face the same pain.
Talk to an Experienced HIE Birth Injury Lawyer Today
Caring for a child with HIE brain damage can place a high emotional and financial strain on families. Seeking legal advice can feel complex and overwhelming, especially when your child needs help immediately. But our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers can begin helping your family from the moment you first reach out.
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Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers
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Our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers are available to meet you in your home or the hospital.
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Over the last four decades, our nationally recognized birth injury team has built a respected reputation for getting results. We have secured large, multi-million dollar settlement sums and trial verdicts for medical malpractice victims across the nation.
Our secret to success? We have vast, in-house network of legal and medical professionals who lend their expertise to each and every case. Most medical malpractice firms will typically employ one or two experienced nurses for consulting. In contrast, our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers work alongside an entire nursing and medical research division.
Each client we represent gets full access to this team. When you hire us, you aren’t just hiring an attorney to represent you. You also have the full support of our nursing staff, nursing advocates, and veteran medical experts. Together, we can answer your legal and medical questions and provide important updates on your case.
Your team will also assist with your child’s day-to-day needs as litigation progresses. This can include things like scheduling specialists’ appointments, obtaining important medical documents, providing transportation and lodging, and more.
Our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers work on a contingency fee basis, meaning no client pays anything unless we win. When we win, we will only ever charge a pre-agreed percentage fee outlined in an attorney-client retainer contract.
Our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers are proud to have a long history of successful birth injury results. Our numbers speak for us in ways that words cannot.
Alabama HIE Birth Injury Settlement
Our firm’s dedicated nursing and medical research division has helped us secure $1 billion+ in jury verdicts and settlements. This includes a $2.29 million verdict for a family in Alabama whose newborn suffered from HIE brain damage at birth.
At a hospital in Baldwin County, Alabama, doctors mismanaged an expecting mother’s delivery and prolonged the baby’s oxygen deprivation. The resulting HIE brain injury caused cortical vision impairments in one eye and delayed developmental milestones like sitting up independently. Our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers helped the family secure a settlement to afford crucial birth injury treatment for the child.
What is HIE Brain Damage During Birth?
HIE is a kind of brain damage at birth that stems from fetal oxygen deprivation. It can happen either during pregnancy or shortly before birth during labor.
The three-letter initialism HIE is short for hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy. Here’s what those terms mean:
- Hypoxic means the injury stems from hypoxia, or a shortage of oxygen in the brain tissue.
- Ischemic means the injury also stems from ischemia, or insufficient blood flow to the brain.
- Encephalopathy is a general term relating to damage, disease, or injury to the brain.
HIE is the top cause of cerebral palsy, which is a group of neurological conditions that affect muscle movement. Newborn HIE injuries also continue to be a leading cause of neonatal mortality and morbidity, particularly in less-developed countries.
How Common are HIE Birth Injuries in Alabama?
Fortunately, very few babies suffer from HIE injuries at birth. In the United States, experts estimate the incidence of this brain injury sits around 1.7 in every 1000 births. Using Alabama birth rate data, we can predict that around 100 newborns in Alabama will develop HIE each year.
How Does A Newborn’s HIE Injury Develop?
HIE birth injuries are complex. The initial dip in oxygenated blood flow sets off a chain reaction of biological processes that progress into permanent damage. Here is how that happens:
Stage 1: Hypoxic-Ischemic Insult
Hypoxic-Ischemic Event: The injury starts with a complication that blocks oxygen and blood from freely flowing to the baby’s brain. This can happen slowly over time (partial prolonged hypoxic event) or very quickly (acute profound hypoxic event). Both prolonged and acute hypoxia can severely injure the brain, just at different speeds.
Cellular Shutdown & Initial Injury: In response to reduced oxygen and blood flow, the baby’s brain cells begin to die. The rapid cellular death triggers swelling and inflammation of the brain tissue. This damage is the initial brain injury.
Stage 2: Oxygen Reperfusion Injury
0-6 Hours After Injury: When the baby begins breathing through their own lungs, oxygenated blood flow to the brain resumes. Doctors call this the latent phase, or a small recovery window where they can begin treating the initial injury. Babies who meet the requirements can receive therapeutic hypothermia during this time to lower swelling and reverse the injury’s severity.
Oxygen Reperfusion & Secondary Injury: As oxygen returns to the brain, the body mistakes the excess inflammation for infection. In response, the baby’s immune system releases high levels of toxins (called free radicals or reactive oxygen species).
These toxins circulate through the brain tissue in search of infection but instead end up damaging surrounding brain cells. Researchers believe this second wave of injury (oxygen reperfusion injury) can actually be more damaging than the initial hypoxic-ischemic insult.
What Causes a Newborn’s HIE Brain Injury?
A newborn’s HIE birth injury is always a direct result of insufficient oxygen and blood flow to the brain.
Even before birth, oxygen is crucial to brain development. Our brain cells need it to produce energy (ATP) through a process called aerobic cellular respiration. In fact, the brain consumes over one fifth of the body’s total energy by adulthood and even more during pregnancy.
Oxygen flows primarily through the blood. If a complication during pregnancy or delivery stops blood flow, it will likely affect the baby’s oxygen supply as well.
Without a steady flow of oxygenated blood, the baby’s brain cells will not have the necessary components to create energy. Without energy, the cells cannot function and begin to die off.
Unlike other cells in the body, these dead brain cells aren’t able to easily regenerate. This is why widespread brain cell damage at birth can have lasting impacts throughout childhood and even into adulthood.
Doctors, nurses, and all other medical professionals in the delivery room must carefully watch for signs of fetal oxygen deprivation. Just minutes without oxygen can irreversibly disrupt brain function.
What Increases the Risk for An HIE Birth Injury?
Even though we know hypoxia and ischemia are what causes HIE, that doesn’t always narrow down how it initially started.
In reality, an uncountable number of different complications and injuries can cut off the baby’s oxygenated blood supply. The tricky part is that these complications don’t always guarantee that an HIE injury will occur.
What we do know about these complications is that they absolutely increase the baby’s risk for dangerous oxygen deprivation. Important risk factors that our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers have seen directly contribute to an HIE diagnosis commonly include:
Placental Complications
The placenta is perhaps the most important organ in the mother’s body during pregnancy. It begins growing in the uterus shortly after conception.
The placenta is the baby’s source of oxygen, blood flow, and vital nutrients necessary for fetal development. Any type of placental complication (insufficiency, abruption, etc.) can block this critical exchange. Untreated placental issues can prolong oxygen deprivation and increase the baby’s risk for hypoxia and ischemia.
Umbilical Cord Problems
The placenta and umbilical cord work together in tandem to deliver vital oxygen and nutrients to the developing fetus.
Knots, kinks, or cord compression can prevent oxygen and blood from getting to the baby’s brain. If medical professionals cannot quickly fix the umbilical cord problem, the baby’s risk for hypoxia and ischemia quickly begin rising.
Umbilical cord issues can dangerously reduce oxygen levels within just minutes. In some cases, an emergency C-section may be necessary to avoid severe perinatal asphyxiation.
Maternal Hypertensive Disorders
During pregnancy, the placenta needs high levels of blood flow so it can deliver oxygen and support the baby. To meet these demands, the mother’s body will slowly increase its blood volume by almost 50% during pregnancy.
The increased blood supply can put strain on the mother’s heart and blood vessels. This can make her vulnerable to hypertensive disorders like preeclampsia, a condition causing high blood pressure and shrunken blood vessels.
Without proper monitoring and intervention, preeclampsia can dangerously restrict placental blood flow and make ischemia more likely. According to 2025 data, nearly 1 in 7 Alabama mothers experienced some degree of hypertension during pregnancy.
Blood Clots in Pregnancy
The mother’s liver creates more blood-clotting proteins during pregnancy to prepare for the blood she will lose at birth. Proteins like fibrinogen and proconvertin, alongside factors like increased pelvic vein pressure, will increase her risk for forming blood clots.
Blood clots (especially placental blood clots) can act as a blockage that prevents oxygenated blood from reaching the baby. This will increase the chances of hypoxia and ischemia when medical professionals cannot swiftly intervene.
Infections During Pregnancy
If a mother has present infections in her system, she can easily transfer it to the baby.
Contracting a fetal or neonatal infection like group b strep or chorioamnionitis can easily trigger widespread bodily inflammation. This inflammation will interfere with oxygen delivery to the baby’s brain, increasing their chances of experiencing hypoxia or ischemia.
Additionally, infections often result in fever. A higher internal temperature increases oxygen demand and lowers the baby’s tolerance to labor, increasing their risk for oxygen deprivation.
Prolonged Labor
During labor, the mother’s uterine contractions place stress on the baby to push them through the birth canal. While this is a natural process, the baby will experience restricted oxygen levels as a result.
But a baby can only withstand a certain degree of restricted oxygen. If the mother’s labor fails to progress (lasting 18+ hours), the restriction can contribute to prolonged hypoxia.
Medications to Induce Labor
When a mother’s contractions stall or her cervix fails to soften, doctors may prescribe and administer labor inducing medications. Medications like Pitocin and Cytotec can aid in cervical effacement, dilation, and the onset of labor contractions.
But too high of a dosage can cause contractions which are too frequent and overly powerful. This labor complication (called uterine hyperstimulation) can leave the baby without time to restore their oxygen supply in between contractions. This can increase their risk of oxygen deprivation if medical professionals do not quickly step in to adjust the dosage.
Uterine Rupture
Uterine ruptures are life-threatening labor complications where the mother’s uterine lining begins to split apart during delivery. This can sever the connection between the baby and the placenta, abruptly cutting off all oxygen flow during labor. A uterine rupture will greatly increase a baby’s risk for HIE injuries and a mother’s risk for mortality.
Shoulder Dystocia
Shoulder dystocia happens when the baby’s head exits the birth canal, but their shoulders remain lodged inside. The longer their shoulders remain lodged behind the mother’s pubic bone, the greater their risk is for birth asphyxia.
Prolonged cases of shoulder dystocia can cut off blood circulation to the baby’s head and potentially cause HIE brain damage.
Birth-Related Head Injuries
Newborn head injuries can cause trauma to their growing brain tissue. This results in inflammation restricting essential blood flow to their brain. If severe enough, birth trauma to the head can disrupt cerebral perfusion enough to cause HIE brain injuries.
Head injuries that can inflict this kind of permanent damage include skull fractures, intracranial hemorrhages, or cephalohematoma. These injuries happen more often during difficult deliveries or when medical professionals misuse delivery instruments like forceps and vacuum extractors.
Premature Birth
Babies born before 36 weeks gestation usually have underdeveloped internal organs, including the heart, brain, and blood vessels. These weaknesses will make it more difficult for them to manage restricted oxygen flow if they experience a hypoxic-ischemic event.
While some babies may experience these birth complications and survive without a brain injury, medical professionals need to understand the risks. Even if the baby doesn’t suffer an HIE injury, there is a possibility they may sustain other birth injuries.
Healthcare providers can lower a baby’s risk by thoroughly checking for issues during prenatal testing appointments. During labor, they should carefully monitor the mother as she progresses and quickly intervene when problems arise. If their action (or inaction) contributes to permanent brain damage, our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers will hold them accountable.
How Can Doctors Spot HIE Brain Damage?
When a baby has HIE brain damage, there are often physical signs of it at birth. In fact, signs can even appear before the baby arrives.
When investigating your case, our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers will check whether medical professionals properly caught the following symptoms:
Signs of Fetal Distress
Fetal distress is a term to describe when the baby’s heart rate shows non-reassuring patterns during labor. They will usually be the first sign of a complication affecting fetal oxygen supply.
Patterns that should immediately alert medical professionals to a potential problem include:
- Late heart rate decelerations after a contraction
- Minimal to no change (variability) in heart rate over several minutes
- Baseline heart rates under 100 beats per minute (suggesting fetal bradycardia)
- Baseline heart rates over 160 beats per minute (suggesting fetal tachycardia)
Doctors and nurses must carefully monitor the baby’s heartbeat to know when intervention is necessary. Intervening can range from adjusting the mother’s position and providing additional fluids to performing an emergency c-section delivery.
Weak Appearance
The baby’s physical characteristics upon delivery can give medical providers important insight into their neurological state. If they have HIE brain damage at birth, doctors may be able to predict it by noticing:
- Shallow breathing or absent breathing requiring neonatal resuscitation
- Irregular pulse (fetal bradycardia or tachycardia)
- Blueish tint around the lips or face, indicating oxygen deprivation
- Arched back
- Little to no movement
- Poor reflexes
- Floppy, weak muscle tone (hypotonia)
Having two or more of the aforementioned physical characteristics may suggest a brain injury like HIE. While it’s not enough for a full HIE diagnosis, medical professionals should look into further testing for neurological damage.
Seizures at Birth
When a baby experiences prolonged hypoxia and ischemia during delivery, it can trigger abnormal electrical signals in the brain.
This abnormal activity causes neurons (brain cells controlling movement) to fire uncontrollably. This can result in uncontrollable convulsions, rhythmic eye movements, and pauses in breathing.
Neonatal seizures can be life-threatening and require quick administration of medications and further monitoring in the neonatal intensive care unit.
Fetal Acidosis
A decrease in oxygen causes the baby’s cells to produce excess lactic acid when producing energy. Over time, lactic acid buildup will cause the baby’s blood pH to drop to dangerously acidic levels.
A blood pH below 7.20 at birth almost always indicates that the baby underwent oxygen deprivation during labor. Research supports severe fetal acidosis being a key symptom of HIE injuries in neonates.
When a newborn has critical HIE brain damage, medical professionals don’t have much time to intervene. It is paramount to notice the early signs so there are zero delays in diagnosing the injury. If healthcare professionals miss the critical intervention window because they didn’t see the signs, it can qualify as medical malpractice. An Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyer can help hold them responsible for their negligence.
What Do Doctors Use to Diagnose HIE Birth Injuries?
Even when a baby presents with clear symptoms of HIE, doctors and nurse practitioners cannot rely on physical signs alone. Instead, they must rely on standardized exams and tools to accurately diagnose HIE brain damage:
Neuroimaging Tests
Neuroimaging scans are the most accurate test for diagnosing HIE injuries because they can reveal damage that is otherwise invisible.
The most common HIE brain imaging test is Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanning. These tests are highly accurate and are completely non-invasive for the baby.
Electroencephalogram (EEG) testing is another important test that can measure the brain’s electrical output. It can alert healthcare providers to abnormal signals and patterns that align with neonatal seizures or brain damage.
These tests help medical professionals determine the precise location, severity, and expected symptoms of a baby’s HIE birth injury.
Umbilical Cord Blood Gas Tests
Low pH balance in umbilical cord blood can reveal when the newborn underwent hypoxia and subsequent fetal acidosis during labor.
An umbilical cord blood gas test can measure the pH level and base deficit within the baby’s blood. Low pH levels and high base deficits indicate that the baby did not receive enough oxygen during delivery.
Results with a pH below 7.18 should push medical professionals to conduct further testing for brain injuries.
APGAR Tests
APGAR stands for five distinct, important physical characteristics at birth: Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity, and Respiration. Healthcare providers (usually the nurse present at birth) will assign a score ranging from 0-2 for each quality.
All newborns receive an APGAR score to evaluate whether they need further medical intervention. Babies with HIE birth injuries will usually score low in all APGAR categories, particularly in the respiration and pulse sections. Doctors often use the APGAR score as a benchmark for determining whether the baby needs further testing for brain damage.
Sarnat Tests
In a similar fashion to the APGAR test, the Sarnat exam has healthcare providers measuring specific neonatal characteristics. However, medical professionals will only conduct this type of assessment with children who they suspect to have HIE.
The categories on the Sarnat exam align closer with common HIE symptoms. This includes criteria like neuromuscular control levels and the presence of seizures.
What Are the Stages of HIE?
The Sarnat scale groups a baby’s HIE birth injury into one of three stages that ascend in severity:
- Stage I (Mild): the HIE damage is minimal. While the baby may need some intervention, they will likely not experience long-term complications.
- Stage II (Moderate): the HIE damage is significant, but it will be treatable with neonatal cooling therapy. Long-term complications are not out of the question.
- Stage III (Severe): the HIE injury is severe and is very likely to affect the rest of the newborn’s life. Early intervention is crucial to avoiding infant death.
An HIE brain injury baby will need early intervention and support from the very start of their life. Newborns with injuries on the cusp between moderate and severe can sometimes avoid permanent complications when doctors act early.
If you suspect doctors failed to properly diagnose your baby in time, consider contacting an Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyer.
What Complications Can HIE Birth Injuries Cause?
Newborns who suffer an HIE birth injury may sustain serious complications that affect how they experience the world around them. These complications may follow them into childhood or even into adulthood.
These are the top complications that our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers see our young clients with brain injuries facing:
Epilepsy
Epilepsy is a neurological disorder where abnormal electrical activity in the brain causes unpredictable and recurring seizures. Babies with HIE brain damage are five times more likely to develop the condition compared to the general population.
According to the Epilepsy Foundation, over 54,000 people suffer from epilepsy in Alabama.
Sensory Processing Disorder
We depend on our brains to process and translate all sensory input from the world around us. But HIE brain damage can destroy the neural pathways and sensory receptors needed to control this information. This commonly results in complications like hearing loss and vision impairments.
Children may also experience a hypersensitivity to stimuli like light, loud noises, or feeling different textures. This can cause irritation to certain clothing, foods, and other items.
Delayed Developmental Milestones
Parents will often eagerly await a child’s first signs of social, physical, and emotional development. A baby’s first words, first steps, and other developmental milestones can reassure parents that they are growing as expected.
However, babies with HIE birth injuries can develop skills on a slower timeline or never develop them at all. Their brain injury can prevent motor signals from firing and allowing the muscle coordination to sit up, stand, or walk.
Other common missed milestones include social and emotional delays, speech impairments, or the lack of speech altogether. The child may also struggle to control their emotions or interact with other kids their age.
Cerebral Palsy
Cerebral palsy is a group of neurological disorders affecting muscle movement, tone, coordination, speech, vision, hearing, and cognition. HIE injuries at birth are the leading cause of cerebral palsy worldwide.
Children with cerebral palsy often feel chronic pain from uncontrollable muscle spasms. Their spasticity may result in paralysis or jerky, involuntary movements. Swallowing disorders and speech impairments like dysarthria or dysphagia are also common with a cerebral palsy diagnosis.
Doctors cannot usually diagnose cerebral palsy at birth because most physical symptoms won’t be immediately visible. However, some symptoms like developmental delays and feeding problems can appear within the first year of life. Healthcare providers must carefully monitor children with HIE for any emerging symptoms of cerebral palsy to ensure timely treatment.
What is the Life Expectancy of a Baby with HIE?
According to nonprofit organization Hope for HIE, roughly 23% of worldwide neonatal deaths stem from severe HIE birth injuries. On top of this, up to 40% of surviving infants face long-term complications like epilepsy, developmental delays, and cerebral palsy.
But even with these complications, children with severe HIE symptoms usually live a normal life expectancy with ongoing treatment. Mild cases of HIE do not affect life expectancy and usually require minimal to no additional treatment.
How Do Doctors Treat HIE Birth Injuries?
A newborn HIE brain injury requires urgent medical attention. However, providing treatment immediately after birth can reduce the injury’s severity and decrease the risk of suffering long-term complications.
HIE Birth Injury Neonatal Treatments
HIE treatment can begin almost immediately after the child’s birth. For the best neonatal outcomes, our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers recommend that healthcare professionals execute the following treatment strategies:
Therapeutic Hypothermia
Therapeutic hypothermia is one of the most effective treatments for HIE immediately after the baby’s birth.
Medical professionals will place them inside of a thermal regulating machine that keeps their internal temperature at 92.3° Fahrenheit. The baby will stay in this machine for roughly 3 days before medical professionals begin the rewarming process.
By lowering the baby’s internal body temperature, it reduces the brain’s metabolic rate. This helps stop inflammation and prevents a secondary wave of tissue damage by making the brain less oxygen dependent.
Preterm babies or babies with low birth weights may not qualify for neonatal cooling. If they do qualify, medical professionals must start the cooling process within six hours of birth. Waiting too long can reduce the treatment’s ability to stop an oxygen reperfusion injury.
Oxygen Therapy
Almost all babies with moderate to severe HIE birth injuries have breathing difficulties at birth. Doctors and delivery nurses must often provide neonatal resuscitation to restore the baby’s oxygen flow and prevent further brain damage.
If the baby is breathing but has low blood oxygen levels (hypoxemia), medical professionals may need to administer supplemental oxygen. They do this primarily with non-invasive tubes called nasal cannulas or with an assisted ventilation machine in extreme cases.
Seizure Management
Nearly 60% of HIE brain injury babies have seizures after birth. These episodes can interrupt breathing and pose an elevated risk to the baby’s life. Medical professionals should consider administering preventative antiseizure medications to babies with HIE, even without witnessing evidence of clinical seizures.
Additionally, they should keep a watchful eye over electrical activity in the baby’s brain. Continued monitoring with an EEG machine after birth will immediately alert healthcare providers of any seizure activity.
HIE Treatments During Childhood
By early childhood age, the effects of a child’s HIE birth injuries will be largely irreversible. Ongoing care at this age becomes less about curing the injury itself and more about treating its related symptoms. Early intervention services and specialized follow-up care are instrumental in treating HIE complications and preventing further harm later in life.
Physical Therapy
An HIE brain injured baby will likely have motor impairments that cause muscle weakness, stiffness, or floppiness throughout childhood. This can hinder their ability to move freely, which prevents them from performing basic tasks and participating in certain activities.
In physical therapy, the child will practice targeted exercises that aim to improve their muscle strength, balance, and coordination. While each child’s exercises will differ based on their needs, the end goal to improve range of motion remains consistent.
Children should start physical therapy as early as possible to avoid wearing down inactive muscle groups and prevent muscle contractures.
Occupational Therapy
Occupational therapy focuses on practicing everyday tasks and skills that a child needs for daily living. This can include things like tying shoes, using eating utensils, and fine motor skills like pinching, clipping, buttoning, and cutting.
Over time, the goal of practicing these tasks is to help children with HIE develop a greater sense of independence.
Speech Therapy
A newborn HIE injury can affect the muscles necessary for eating, speaking, and swallowing. Speech therapy can help a child with neurological speech impairments practice targeted exercises to improve their abilities.
Over time, a speech therapist can boost confidence and social independence for children with HIE by improving their speaking skills.
Assistive Equipment & Devices
Some children with HIE have mobility restrictions because of muscle weakness, hypotonia, and paralysis. This can bar them from doing everyday tasks like travelling, communicating, or even lying down on their own.
Assistive equipment and devices like wheelchairs, walkers, and adaptive furniture can help these kids get around easier on their own. Home modifications like exterior ramps and roll-in showers can make activities around the house more accessible.
If their HIE brain injury causes speech impairments, some children may even utilize adaptive communication devices for interacting with others.
Family Voices of Alabama
Since 1992, Family Voices of Alabama has facilitated family-centered care for children across the state with special health care needs. They provide services free of charge to Alabama families who qualify.
When you reach out to Family Voices, they will collect some basic information to assess your family’s specific needs. Their staff can help families opt in to state-sponsored programs such as “ALL Kids”, Alabama’s Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Their website features additional helpful information, such as resource directories and tip sheets for questions to ask new healthcare providers.
Does HIE Have a Cure?
Like most brain injuries, researchers are still searching for the cure to HIE. Early intervention within 6 hours after birth (namely neonatal brain cooling) is the most effective treatment for actually reversing inflammation. During early childhood, a variety of medications, treatments, and therapies can reduce the severity of some HIE symptoms.
The extent to which HIE will impact a child’s life will largely depend on the initial injury’s severity. Mild cases do not usually cause long-term impairment or disability. However, children with moderate to severe cases will likely need some form of HIE treatment throughout their life.
Did Medical Malpractice Cause My Child’s HIE Birth Injury?
When their newborn shows signs of an HIE birth injury, parents should always question how it happened. Though they may not wish to believe it, the blame may fall on negligent medical professionals overseeing their baby’s birth.
Common Medical Mistakes That Lead to HIE Brain Injuries
There are numerous delivery room errors that could put a baby in danger for developing an HIE birth injury. Some of the most common mistakes our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers catch include:
- Failure to properly monitor the mother’s blood pressure during delivery
- Failure to carefully monitor fetal heart rates and respond to signs of fetal distress
- Missing placental problems like insufficiency or an abruption
- Missing umbilical cord problems like nuchal cord or cord compression
- Failure to sufficiently treat maternal infections like group b strep or chorioamnionitis
- Failure to intervene when the mother has a prolonged or arrested labor
- Delaying an emergency C-section when the baby has no access to oxygen
- Administering labor inducing medications and failing to adjust the dosage when complications occur
- The use of excessive force with delivery instruments like forceps and vacuum extractors
- Failure to conduct proper neuroimaging tests or umbilical cord blood gas testing after birth to confirm a case of HIE
- Failure to start therapeutic hypothermia treatment after an HIE birth injury
- Downplaying the extent of a child’s HIE birth injury to their parents and family
If you believe your doctors may have made any of these errors during your delivery, don’t hesitate to reach out. One phone call with an Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyer can bring your family closer to justice and financial compensation.
What Is the Deadline to File an Alabama HIE Birth Injury Case?
A statute of limitations (SOL) sets a time limit on how long an injured person has to file a lawsuit.
Statutes of limitations vary based on the type of case and the state in which you filed it. For instance, the deadline for birth injury claims typically differs from other claims like fraud, contract disputes, and debt collection.
Alabama Code Section 6-5-482 - Limitation on Time for Commencement of Action
For adults, the statute of limitations in medical malpractice lawsuits is generally 2 years from the date of negligence. For children, the statute of limitations is slightly different. Parents may file a birth injury or medical malpractice claim for their child no later than their 8th birthday.
Generally, the clock starts ticking on the date the injury occurred. However, there are exceptions to this rule. Some states (including Alabama) have something called the discovery rule. This means the statute of limitations starts after a person discovers or should have reasonably discovered an injury.
Depending on who you’re suing, you may need to file your claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). In FTCA cases, claimants must go through certain administrative procedures before filing a lawsuit. The time period in which you must give "notice" may be shorter in some cases. Examples include if the negligent party was a local or state government hospital, or if the doctors are government employees.
The court will typically dismiss your case if you file it outside the statute of limitations. However, certain exceptions exist to the rules when the injured party is a child. Determining when a statute of limitations begins and ends can be tricky. If you're considering pursuing compensation for a birth injury, contact an Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyer as soon as possible.
How Can Our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Attorneys Help?
Working with one of our Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyers can open opportunities for life-changing medical treatment. We will work to secure financial compensation that your family can use to cover treatments you otherwise couldn’t afford, including:
- Medical treatments, appointments, procedures, and therapies to treat HIE complications
- Assistive equipment like mobility aids, communication devices, and home modifications
- Medications to treat related conditions like seizures or involuntary muscle spasms
- In-home caregivers and medical attendants who can provide around-the-clock care
Our Process
Our team of HIE Birth Injury Lawyers in Alabama will use our extensive case review process to assess your claim.
We start by speaking with your family directly to learn more about you and your child. We’ll gather medical records like fetal heart rate strips to support your claims. Important details we will consider and investigate further include:
- The types and dosages of medications doctors prescribed and administered during labor
- Whether medical professionals responded quickly enough to your delivery complications
- The time it took medical professionals to order and conduct an emergency C-section
- How quickly healthcare providers started neonatal cooling after birth in the event of an HIE brain injury
We consult with experienced medical experts like pediatric neurologists, radiologists, and neonatologists. They will review your records to determine whether medical errors could have contributed to your newborn's HIE injury. If we make a recovery, we will move forward with an official HIE birth injury medical malpractice lawsuit.
At no point will you need to pay any fees during the legal intake or litigation process. Our dedicated nursing and medical research division will conduct a comprehensive review of your case for free.
Our contingency fee policy means that we only charge attorney’s fees on cases we win. You will never have to pay out of pocket; we charge a pre-agreed fee outlined in our attorney-client retainer contract. We do not take on any HIE birth injury cases unless we fully know we will win.
We have experience handling medical malpractice cases in major cities across Alabama, including Birmingham, Montgomery, Huntsville, and more. Reach out to an Alabama HIE Birth Injury Lawyer by calling our toll-free line at (888) 987-0005. Additionally, you can schedule a free consultation by filling out our online request form.
National Birth Injury Law
Our National Birth Injury Attorneys, nurses, and support staff understand that parents of children with birth injuries feel overwhelmed. So, every client has the attention and support of a team of trained, compassionate professionals. But we don’t just offer compassion.
We offer a process to help you discover whether your child’s birth injury, HIE, cerebral palsy or brain injury at birth was caused by medical malpractice.
Call our offices today at (888) 987-0005 for experienced assistance in a free consultation.
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- Lyric C. I feel like our voice was heard in a sense of what can possibly go wrong in a delivery and finding us answers. I feel with our settlement, we are now in a comfortable position to provide for our son.
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