Vol V, Issue 4 Date of Publication: November 07, 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.20529/IJME.2020.093

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Cerebral palsy litigation after fifty years: A hoax on you

Thomas P. Sartwelle
James C Johnston
Berna Arda
Mehila Zebenigus
Abstract:
The worldwide cerebral palsy (CP) litigation crisis is predicated on the hoax that electronic foetal monitoring (EFM) predicts and prevents CP. There are decades of research disproving this hoax, yet EFM continues to be performed in the vast majority of labours in developed countries with resultant harm to mothers and babies alike through unnecessary caesarean sections with all of the attendant complications and ramifications of that procedure. This article reviews the history and evolution of EFM, explores the reasons for its misuse, discusses how obstetricians have abandoned their ethical mandate by failing to obtain informed consent for EFM, and proposes a realistic, practical solution that would effectively change the standard of care.


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©Indian Journal of Medical Ethics 2020: Open Access and Distributed under the Creative Commons license ( CC BY-NC-ND 4.0),
which permits only non-commercial and non-modified sharing in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.

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