In April 1986, Belin Cabrera, then 8 months old, suffered a seizure as a result of a high fever. His mother, Arlette, took him to General Hospital in Queens, New York, where a routine spinal tap was recommended to rule out spinal meningitis. Arlette refused to consent to the procedure, which involves extracting spinal fluid by inserting a needle.
Staff then took Belin to another room, telling Arlette that they were going to examine her son and that hospital rules prohibited her presence during the examination. In fact, an intern began performing a spinal tap with a nurse's assistance. Arlette waited outside the room, listening to Belin cry.
A few minutes after the procedure began, the child stopped crying. Arlette entered the room and was told her son had suffered respiratory and cardiac arrest and was dying. A priest administered last rites.
Miraculously, Belin was revived. However, he is now quadriplegic, mentally retarded, blind, and incontinent. Now 12, he will require life-long 24-hour care, including assistance eating through a special tube in his stomach. He is especially at risk for choking on his own saliva and must be supervised constantly. As a result, he sleeps in a hospital bed in his parents' room so that they can check on him every 10 to 15 minutes during the night.
A heartbroken Arlette sued New York's Health and Hospitals Corporation, which operated Queens General in 1986. Cabrera charged that hospital staff had negligently performed the spinal tap. She charged that while holding Belin down, the nurse had flexed his head too far forward, crushing his trachea and cutting off his oxygen supply.
Cabrera also claimed this tragedy could have been avoided if (1) the nurse and intern had resuscitated Belin sooner, (2) the intern had properly supervised the nurse, and (3) the hospital had placed an experienced doctor in the room during the procedure.
The jury's award in the dramatic seven-day trial will provide much-needed relief for Belin's parents, who have vowed to personally care for their son as long as they can.
This case illustrates the power of our civil justice system to compensate those affected by medical negligence. According to one Harvard study, of the 2.7 million patients hospitalized in New York in 1984, 3.7 percent experienced injury from medical intervention-not the underlying disease. What the Cabrera case shows is that our legal system will hold doctors and hospitals accountable for causing harm to innocent people.
04/19/00
