this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2024
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According to a lawsuit filed by the parents, the baby became stuck during labor and the doctor began pulling.

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[–] can@sh.itjust.works 78 points 9 months ago (10 children)
[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 33 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's like something out of some sick comedy sketch. Except with actual human suffering.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 25 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

Officials with Southern Regional Medical Center issued a statement saying that “this unfortunate infant death occurred in utero prior to the delivery and decapitation,” and said that the doctor who delivered the baby, Tracy St. Julian is not “and never has been” an employee of the hospital.

I wish it was.

[–] gregorum@lemm.ee 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

it's common for doctors in private practice to have privileges at local hospitals to practice, see patients, perform procedures, surgeries, etc.

part of that doctor's service fee is paid to the hospital for this privilege.

[–] SeaJ@lemm.ee 4 points 9 months ago

I love that they are going with the "it's not the OB's fault and even if it were, they don't work for us." That guide is actually worse than if they just denied it was their fault. What they admitted is that they admitted a woman who was in labor and did not assign a doctor to her but instead let a random woman help deliver and decapitate the baby. That is a systemic issue and clearly the people managing the hospital should be named from operating any hospital ever again.

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[–] drdiddlybadger@pawb.social 10 points 9 months ago

I can't think of a more appropriate response.

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[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 55 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Surgical tech here. Can't really comment on the clinical justification for what's going on here cuz 1) I'm just a tech; and 2) I wasn't there; but I’ve done a metric fuck-ton of c-sections, so figured I'd chime in with some behind-the-scenes insight. C-sections can be brutal as hell. Never been in on a vaginal delivery, cuz that’s not OR territory, but c-sections are the kind of case you’re on high alert for the entire time cuz shit can go south really fast for both mother and baby. The amount of force I’ve seen (and contributed to) applied to get a baby out could definitely be in dismemberment territory if there was some defect at play that could make the bones/muscles weaker than normal... article doesn't say anything about that being the case, but point is that we tend to think of handling babies as being an exceptionally gentle process, and that is 100% not the case when it comes to getting them out of the mother.

Some of the most horrific things I’ve seen in the OR have been in the c-section room. But they’re the kind of thing that if you don’t do, it’s basically a death sentence for the mom or the baby... like, do you leave a baby stuck in the birth canal with its umbilical cord wrapped around its neck; or do you pull a little harder to get it out? You're weighing certain death against possible death, but the latter being an exceptionally shocking worse-case scenario.

Can't emphasize enough: wasn't there, can't justify squat, but I have been in situations where the the surgeon weighed a risk like that, and the only reason you didn't read about that case in the news was that the risk paid off and we got the desired outcome. Luck.

The ruling on this one of homicide as opposed to murder or even involuntary manslaughter is a point of interest. Homicide is the killing of another human, but isn't typically a charge in and of itself... illegal and intentional homicide is murder; legal and justifiable homicide could be something like self defense... but just "homicide" only tells us that the baby was killed, and yeah no shit.

Anyway, based on my own experience, I’d give the doc and delivery team the benefit of the doubt in terms of the operation: extreme circumstances can call for an extreme response, and when that doesn’t work, the result is also extreme. This is a case that will haunt the staff involved all the way to the grave - really hope the hospital hooks them all up with top-notch therapy after that shit. The absence of murder/manslaughter charge leads me to believe their investigation found some merit in the doc's decision to pull extra hard.

Thad said, state law is a weird animal, so "homicide" in Georgia legally speaking could be equatable to "murder" everywhere else. /shrug.

But even assuming the best-case-scenario clinically, the lack of transparency after the fact though is 100% inexcusable, but also unsurprising coming from a private hospital. Their decisions are driven by money and PR. Ethics are a tie breaker at best.

[–] medgremlin@midwest.social 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The bit that makes me not want to give the benefit of the doubt is the fact that they had lost fetal heart tones an hour before going to C-section. For a delivery like this with a couple known complications going into it, the threshold to go to the OR should be much lower. Also, as barbaric as it is, something like an episiotomy could have averted this death.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago (3 children)

An episiotomy is a cut (incision) made in the tissue between the vaginal opening and the anus during childbirth. This area is called the perineum. Although an episiotomy was once a routine part of childbirth, that's no longer the case.

Wow

[–] medgremlin@midwest.social 4 points 9 months ago

Like I said, it's kind of barbaric, but it can be used as an intermediate measure if there's something like shoulder dystocia but the mother is against or hesitant about going to C-Section. These days, the episiotomy incision is made at a very specific angle so as to preserve function of the pelvic floor muscles, and it can also be used as an intervention or prophylaxis against perineal tearing which is more likely to damage the pelvic floor muscles and lead to complications.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

LOL, wait till you see your wife get cut in real time. Jesus. All I saw was a flash of steel.

"Uh, what was that? Oh hell no..."

[–] Jimmyeatsausage@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

At least asking the husband if he wants the doctor to "tighten her up a bit" by stitching the perineum up further than nomal has fallen out of fashion.

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

C-sections can be done to recover the corpse of a fetus. It's not common - I've only seen it once, it was easily the single most fucked up thing I've witnessed. An hour isn't an unreasonable amount of time to staff and setup a c-section. It's not a STAT, for sure, but with the fetus already dead, the only urgency would be on behalf of the mother, so if her life wasn't in danger at that time, things were likely slowing back down at that point.

[–] medgremlin@midwest.social 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm saying that they should have gone to C-Section or episiotomy long before it got to that point. This was already known to be a higher risk delivery, and the first sign of shoulder dystocia or other complication should have been the time to elevate the level of care....not several hours later.

[–] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

I don't have the expertise or experience to comment on what they should have done - 100% of my experience with OB is c-sections; I've just seen how shit can go from bad to haunt-you-for-the-rest-of-your-life in less time than it takes to process and act on wtf just happened in that room.

Sounds like you do have that experience/expertise, so I'll take what you're saying at face value; my only goal here was to caution folks against going straight for the torches and pitchforks considering the high likelyhood of contributing factors that either weren't reported or are outside of our normal scope of thinking.

[–] Plum@lemmy.world 55 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

"Officials... said that the doctor who delivered the baby, Tracy St. Julian is not “and never has been” an employee of the hospital."

How does that work?

[–] SinningStromgald@lemmy.world 59 points 9 months ago (1 children)

A doctor can have practice rights at a hospital but not work for the hospital. So the OBGYN can deliver babies and do C-sections and such but isn't an employee of the hospital.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 18 points 9 months ago (2 children)

And that's enough for the hospital to think they're not responsible for what they do in their building?

[–] SinningStromgald@lemmy.world 28 points 9 months ago

No they are just trying to draw a definitive line between the two entities. Doctors private practice vs the hospital. Probably for legal reasons but mostly for PR reasons. You know so they can argue that there was nothing to indicate Dr. Bebe Decapitator would decapitate a baby prior to actually doing so and that the doctor was very much a really real doctor that knew medical stuff so please don't make us pay lotses of money for the doctor doing a naughty.

[–] gibmiser@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

It's a way to make it sound like it wasn't their fault for hiring bad doctors

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[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 28 points 9 months ago (3 children)

If I know my movies and TV shows, you go into the locker room and steal someone's lab coat and everyone thinks you belong.

[–] SeaJ@lemm.ee 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)
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[–] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 7 points 9 months ago

Or your boss invites your estranged wife to just work there without telling anyone she's coming. Oh and then you hire the guy she slept with. And everyone is fucking everyone all the time. Including patients.

I swear, if Seattle Grace had an HR department they're probably all alcoholics.

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[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 6 points 9 months ago

Doctors sometimes work as contractors for different hospitals.

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[–] chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz 24 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Ok, so from the article, the doctor attempted to puke that baby out and decapitated in the process. They had to do a c section to get the body out separately. The doctor then just tells the parents the baby died, not how it died. The parents find out at the nursing home the baby was decapitated.

So they hire a pathologist to do a post mortem analysis on the body and the pathologist POSTS GRAPHIC PHOTOS OF THE BODY ON HIS INSTAGRAM.

[–] nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca 12 points 9 months ago

the doctor attempted to puke that baby out

Well that's... quite the visual.

[–] stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 10 points 9 months ago

The previous article about the story that this one links to says the doctor not only lied, they also tried to cover it up by wrapping the baby up so tightly the parents couldn’t tell its head wasn’t attacked, and saying they couldn’t get the free autopsy they were eligible for and that they should cremate the body. Wtf.

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[–] badbytes@lemmy.world 16 points 9 months ago

Nope I'm out.

[–] AlphaBetaGammaTheta@lemmynsfw.com 11 points 9 months ago

Jesus Christ.

[–] TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago

Noah, get the boat.

[–] AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I didn't even know that was possible. Are they really that delicate that you can decapitate them just by pulling? That's horrifying.

[–] doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 9 months ago

Based on the article the doctor spent hours pulling and contorting the baby's head. So, Im guessing that no it's not something you can do just by pulling i.e. something went very wrong here, hence an investigation and possibly criminal charges in the near future.

[–] sik0fewl@kbin.social 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)
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