The doctor who used a suction during the baby’s delivery 15 times is being sued by the parents of a newborn from Connecticut who passed away exactly 24 hours after the baby was delivered.
Alexander M. Diaz, Danielle Mackenzie and Fabrice Diaz’s son, was born on February 18; according to their lawsuit, Dr. Jay Matut, an OB/GYN at Greenwich Hospital, used a vacuum to deliver the baby.
According to the lawsuit, Mackenzie went into labor on February 17, when she was forty weeks and three days pregnant, setting off a sequence of circumstances that ultimately led to her death.
She was fully dilated around 8:10 p.m. and told to begin pushing. Following an estimated one hour and forty minutes of pushing, Matut proposed that the mother have a vacuum-assisted delivery in order to hasten the birth, according to court filings.
The lawsuit claims that Matut applied and released the vacuum to the baby’s head twelve times in a half-hour period. The mother was told to push on her own at 10:14 p.m. The lawsuit claims that after the mother pushed for 36 minutes, Dr. Matut gave her an episiotomy and delivered the baby at 10:58 p.m. after reapplying and releasing the suction at least three more times.
The newborn’s condition is described in the court records. He was limp, his head bloated, and he did not cry. In critical condition, he was admitted right away to the hospital’s newborn intensive care unit.
He was admitted to the newborn critical care unit of Yale New Haven Hospital when his condition didn’t get better, and the lawsuit stated that the following night, at 10:58 p.m., he passed away there. Hemorrhagic hypovolemic shock brought on by a large subgaleal hematoma was the cause of his death.
According to court records, Matut “acted in a manner that constituted an extreme departure from ordinary care and in a situation where a high degree of danger was apparent under all of the circumstances then and there present, with a reckless and conscious disregard of the just rights and safety of the infant-plaintiff decedent.”
In addition to other claims, the lawsuit accuses Greenwich Hospital, Yale New Haven Health, Summit Health, and Matut of negligence, negligently causing emotional distress, and recklessness for improperly using the vacuum, failing to give up on the device, using it for more than fifteen minutes, failing to recommend a cesarean section, and disobeying the mother’s request for a c-section following a failed vacuum delivery.
Source: Law and Crime