Coombe faces multimillion-euro bill for boy’s catastrophic injuries at birth

The Coombe Women’s Hospital is facing a multimillion-euro bill after a High Court judge ruled it is liable for catastrophic injuries suffered by a boy minutes after his birth at the Dublin hospital.

Had Eoin Dunne been effectively ventilated nine minutes after birth rather than at 17 minutes, he would probably not have suffered his devastating injuries, Ms Justice Mary Irvine found. The delay was unacceptable and the hospital was negligent in failing to ensure the child received the type of intubation and ventilation “mandated in the first 10 minutes of his life”.

What might be relevant to the failure of a senior member of the paediatric staff able to carry out an intubation to attend within the first five minutes of Eoin’s life was that, although an “extremely high” number of babies are delivered at the Coombe — about 8,000 a year — there was only one paediatric registrar on duty, the judge remarked.

Eoin, now 10, of Malahide, Co Dublin, is wheelchair dependent with severe dyskinetic cerebral palsy.

In his action against the Coombe Women and Infants’ University Hospital, it was claimed he suffered those injuries due to delays by the hospital in resuscitating him in the minutes after his birth.

The legal costs of the action, brought on Eoin’s behalf by his mother, Dr Fiona Murphy, an anaesthetist, could be as high as €2m, while the level of damages to be paid to Eoin will be decided later.

In her judgment on liability, Ms Justice Irvine founds Eoin’s injuries were caused as a result of a period of near-total acute hypoxic ischaemia, which began two or three minutes before his birth and ended when his heartbeat was restored 20 minutes later following resuscitation.

If the hospital had acted with reasonable care for Eoin’s welfare, there was no reason why he should not have been effectively ventilated by the time he was nine minutes old, she found. Had that occurred, he would not have suffered the injuries.

She found Eoin was born in moderate condition at 6.35am on Jul 30, 2002, and at the time of his birth was not suffering from any inherent defect or genetic abnormality, as the hospital had alleged.

Given his condition at birth, Eoin should have responded to positive pulmonary ventilation had it been effectively delivered, she found.