Medical Malpractice Lawsuit?

[leland]

My sister had a baby 6 weeks ago. She was rushed to the hospital today because of excruitating pains in her lower stomach and would not let up. She's already had her 6 week checkup and they said that everything was fine and she was healing up good from the delivery. Well, today, in the emergency room, after an ultrasound and exam the doctors found what would have been her 6 week old baby's twin still in her stomach, dead. They totally missed this on every ultrasound that she had, how is this possible. Is this just one of those things that's just an Oops, simple mistake or should we be calling a lawyer.

[tate8]

So, I would assume she was taken to surgery immediately to have the demised fetus removed? That's the standard protocol for something like this. That surgery would be done by an OB/GYN and I would wait to see what she/he has to say about it when they consult with your sister and her hubby/boyfriend after the surgery. I would take a guess that the "twin" didn't develop properly since a full term fetus (even one that was SGA (small for gestational age) would not allow a uterus to shrink back to nearly non-pregnant size. There is a lot more to this situation than what can be determined by an ED ultrasound.

[montgomery69]

Not necessarily either (mistake or malpractice). This is a fetal demise, I suspect, at a very early stage in the pregnancy and may not have been visible on the pre natal ultrasounds if the normally developing twin was covering it. They do not do an ultrasound after birth so picking it up would be impossible until this point, when the uterus could not shrink down to normal after birth, particularly if the placenta was also typical for a single gestation (not a twin gestation). Not everything goes picture perfect in medicine, but it is not always someone's fault. Sometimes things have to develop naturally to be diagnosed.