An Illinois mother was awarded $5 million by a Cook County jury for an unnecessary hysterectomy she received following the delivery of her first child. Because of the defendant obstetrician’s medical negligence the 31 year-old woman will not be able to have children in the future.
The mother arrived at Northwestern Memorial Hospital to have labor induced for her first child and underwent a Cesarean section. While the labor and delivery itself was relatively uncomplicated and did not result in any birth injury to the child, the mother did develop post-operative bleeding following the procedure.
Citing the post-operative bleeding, the defendant physician elected to perform a hysterectomy. The obstetrician claimed that there was not enough time to try an alternative method to stop the mother’s bleeding and that therefore the hysterectomy was necessary in order to save the plaintiff’s life and that it did not constitute Illinois medical malpractice.
However, the plaintiff claimed that the obstetrician had deviated from the accepted standard of care for obstetricians in Cook County because she had failed to try alternative surgery techniques to alleviate the bleeding and that those alternate methods would not have led to sterilization. Instead the obstetrician opted to try the most drastic measure first, which would inevitably result in the woman’s lost chance of future pregnancies.
In response to these accusations, the defendant obstetrician argued that she performed the hysterectomy on an emergency basis and that the drastic measure was in fact required because of the persistent bleeding. However, this argument apparently did not carry much weight with the Cook County jury as they ruled in favor of the plaintiff.
Kreisman Law Offices has been handling Illinois medical malpractice lawsuits and Chicago birth injury cases for over 30 years, serving those areas in and around Cook County including Skokie, Elmwood Park, Naperville, and Oak Lawn.