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Mother sues hospital over traumatic birth she claims caused son’s brain damage
A Victorian mother is suing a Geelong hospital for more than one million dollars over claims negligence led to her son being born with a disability requiring life-long care.
Lisa Otsen alleges her son Landon would not have developed cerebral palsy if an emergency caesarean was performed swiftly after she arrived at University Hospital Geelong in excruciating labour pain in January, 2019.
Lisa Otsen with her son Landon, 4, at a local park in Torquay.Credit: Joe Armao
But the caesarean did not occur for six hours.
Two independent medical experts engaged by Shine Lawyers claim a caesarean should have taken place hours earlier to prevent Landon’s brain damage, which was allegedly caused by a lack of oxygen and blood flow to the brain.
“It’s changed everything,” said Lisa, who has taken her fight to the Supreme Court. “I’m his full-time carer. It’s like having a newborn who is four-and-a-half.”
Barwon Health spokeswoman Kate Bibby said the health service was unable to provide further comment because the matter was before the courts. It has not yet filed its defence.
Pinpointing the exact cause of cerebral palsy is vexed.
Professor Hannah Dahlen, a midwifery expert at Western Sydney University, said while most cerebral palsy was associated with events during pregnancy, litigation often linked cerebral palsy to traumatic births.
“It’s a tricky area,” she said, adding that continuous fetal monitoring was a poor indicator of fetal wellbeing.
A study by Australian researchers Fiona Stanley and Eve Blair found that birth trauma was a rare cause of cerebral palsy, with only around one in ten cases linked to labour.
Lisa has given up her dream job as a long-haul flight attendant to provide around-the-clock care for Landon. The blue-eyed four-year-old cannot walk, talk or crawl and needs help feeding, bathing and toileting.
He uses eye gaze technology to communicate with his friends and family on a special computer screen.
Lisa is seeking compensation for her loss of income, psychiatric injuries and Landon’s future medical expenses and equipment.
She said the family needed to move into a modified home with more space for Landon’s equipment and hoists throughout the ceilings. They also need a van that can fit a wheelchair. While the NDIS has funded feeding and bathing equipment for Landon, as well as a standing frame, wheelchair and regular sessions with a speech therapist, physiotherapist and occupational therapist, it will not fund a van or new housing.
“I won’t be able to lift him for much longer,” Lisa said, after heaving Landon, who weighs about 17 kilograms, from her lap to the floor of their Torquay home and turning on his favourite television show, Word Party.
When Lisa and her husband Cullen took Landon home from hospital they didn’t suspect that anything was wrong.
But by the time he was eight weeks old it became apparent that something was amiss: Landon was crying excessively, unsettled and not feeding well.
“I thought he might have reflux or colic, so I decided to take him back to the hospital,” Lisa recalled.
An MRI scan confirmed that Landon had brain damage and a doctor handed Lisa some pamphlets about cerebral palsy.
“I was shocked. I didn’t go in there thinking he had brain damage. I thought he had digestive issues.”
Cerebral palsy is a group of disorders that affects a person’s muscle tone, posture and movement and can be caused by gene mutations, maternal infections, or a fetal stroke.
Daniel Opare, from Shine Lawyers, said two medical experts engaged by his law firm had found that Lisa’s birth should have been accelerated 90 minutes after abnormal heartbeat monitoring.
“The hospital should have arranged for a caesarian to occur within the next one hour,” Opare said. “It would have avoided the brain damage and cerebral palsy.”
The medical experts also obtained records that allegedly showed that Landon suffered seizures and had to be resuscitated after he was born – information that Lisa and Cullen say was not disclosed to them at the time.
It’s not the first time that an Australian hospital has been sued over claims that negligence has caused cerebral palsy. In 2018, a mother lodged a $20 million medical negligence claim in the Supreme Court in Brisbane against one of Queensland’s largest hospitals for allegedly causing her son’s cerebral palsy. And last year, an Adelaide teenager with cerebral palsy and autism received $9.5 million in compensation after he was deprived of oxygen for 27 minutes following his birth.
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