Delayed Diagnosis and Treatment for Retained Placenta in Sussex

Ms White was awarded £10,000 for medical negligence. The claim involves the retained placenta after labour on 30th November 2019.

The Defendant Trust failed to remove Ms White’s placenta to a reasonable and appropriate standard after labour. As a result, Ms White’s placenta was retained and she suffered from persistent vaginal bleeding whilst in hospital.

Ms White informed the midwife that she was suffering from bleeding but no further investigations were undertaken and the she was discharged from hospital care.

As a consequence of the hospital’s negligence, Ms White suffered from persistent vaginal bleeding for a period of 3 months and in February 2020 underwent an Evacuation of Retained Products of Conception (ERCP) to remove the retained placenta.

Instructing Solicitors undertook further investigations and obtained an independent report from a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist.

The expert confirmed that an ordinarily competent Obstetrician would have, prior to proceeding with the manual removal of Ms White’s placenta, checked the antenatal scans for the position of the placenta within the uterine cavity and would have noted that the scan performed at 20 weeks gestation showed that there was a placental succenturiate lobe.

Having appreciated that there was a succenturiate lobe, the expert avers that a competent Obstetrician would have taken extra care during the manual removal of placenta to explore the cavity for this extra lobe of placenta and that a failure to do so amounted to a breach and duty.

Further to this, the expert confirmed that there was a breach of duty in failing to check the removed products for the presence of the succenturiate lobe.

The expert confirmed that had Ms White received the appropriate and reasonable treatment in November 2019, she would not have experienced continuous heavy vaginal bleeding for a period of 12 weeks and would not have required an ERCP on 11th February 2020.