Woman awarded €87,000 for injury during childbirth

A YOUNG woman who experienced incontinence and other difficulties after suffering a torn anal sphincter muscle during childbirth has been awarded about €87,000 damages against the Health Service Executive at the High Court.

Mr Justice Peter Charleton made the award to the woman (33) arising from delays by management at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, in implementing what he described as “extremely important” guidelines relating to the treatment and repair of injuries which often occurred during childbirth.

The woman experienced the third degree anal sphincter injury at the time of the delivery of her first child, by forceps, in October 2001 following a difficult birth. It was repaired by an obstetrical registrar, without regional or general anaesthetic, according to the hospital procedures then in place.

Some months earlier, in July 2001, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists had issued guidelines entitled Management of Third and Fourth Degree Perineal Tears Following Vaginal Delivery.

As these guidelines were extremely important, involving commonly occurring injuries and making practical and “difficult to dispute” suggestions, they should have been implemented soon after being issued, Mr Justice Charleton said.

At the very least, the hospital should have ensured they were discussed with its staff or were circulated to them, whether by paper or electronic means. The guidelines were “of critical importance to the avoidance of anal injury”.

The guidelines were not implemented at the Drogheda hospital until 2002 and that was a fault in hospital management, not the individual doctor who repaired the tear, he ruled.

He was satisfied the doctor who repaired the tear did what the hospital required her to do at the time but, had the guidelines been in place, it was clear there would have been “a better outcome”.

Earlier, he rejected claims by the woman of a lack of care in the management of the delivery of her son.