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A neonatal seizure is the most common neurological emergency in newborns, and it's not a condition itself but a signal that something has gone wrong in the brain. When the underlying cause is an HIE, a stroke, or a brain bleed as a result of a mismanaged delivery, neonatal seizures become the starting point of a birth injury investigation.
The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary represents families in Miami, Florida, in cases where a newborn's seizures were traced back to preventable failures during labor and delivery.
Case EvaluationNeonatal seizures are seizures that occur within the first 28 days of life. Unlike epilepsy, most neonatal seizures are acute symptomatic seizures, meaning they are caused by an underlying brain injury or systemic illness rather than a primary seizure disorder. That distinction matters because in most cases the seizure itself is not the injury but the signal that a more serious injury has already occurred and needs to be identified.
The most common underlying causes include hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, neonatal stroke, intracranial hemorrhage, brain infections, metabolic disorders, and congenital brain abnormalities. Of these, oxygen deprivation is by far the most prevalent. HIE accounts for approximately 38% to 48% of neonatal seizures worldwide, and among infants with severe HIE, as many as 50% develop seizures, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Each of these causes carries its own legal implications, and each one points back to decisions made before, during, and immediately after delivery.
Most neonatal seizures occur during the first 24 to 72 hours after birth, and seizures associated with HIE typically begin 6 to 24 hours after the oxygen-deprivation event. That timing provides medical and legal investigators with a narrow window to examine, and what the delivery record shows during that window often determines whether a malpractice claim has merit.
Neonatal seizures can also be extraordinarily difficult to detect without monitoring. Many produce only subtle clinical signs, and some produce no visible signs at all. For this reason, continuous EEG monitoring is recognized as the diagnostic gold standard by the International League Against Epilepsy and current neonatal seizure guidelines. When a medical team fails to order EEG monitoring in a newborn at high risk, or fails to recognize the subtle signs that should prompt that order, the resulting delay in diagnosis can allow brain injury to deepen.
Because most neonatal seizures are symptoms of an underlying brain injury, birth injury cases involving seizures almost always focus on what caused that injury rather than the seizures themselves. Medical records commonly reviewed in these cases include fetal heart monitoring strips, Apgar scores, cord blood gas testing, EEG recordings, MRI findings, and NICU records. The questions those records are used to answer include whether providers:
When seizures are caused by significant brain injury, the risk of permanent neurological impairment is substantial. Long-term complications associated with seizure-causing brain injuries include:
For families, a neonatal seizure diagnosis frequently marks the beginning of years of neurological monitoring, therapy, medication management, and educational support. When those needs trace back to an oxygen-deprivation event that a timely intervention could have prevented, or to a brain bleed that was not identified quickly enough, the law provides a path to hold responsible parties accountable.
Families pursuing a birth injury or medical malpractice claim in Florida related to neonatal seizures and their underlying causes may be entitled to compensation for:
In cases where the brain injury underlying neonatal seizures results in the death of a newborn, a wrongful death claim may allow the family to recover for funeral expenses, medical costs incurred prior to death, and loss of companionship.
Neonatal seizure cases require tracing the injury backward through the delivery record to identify the point at which a provider's failure changed the outcome for your child. We work with obstetric and neurological experts who can review fetal monitoring strips, EEG recordings, MRI findings, and NICU records to build a complete picture of what caused your newborn's seizures and whether that cause was preventable.
A newborn's seizures are never something to accept without answers. If your child experienced seizures after birth and the medical team has not fully explained why, contact The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary for a free case evaluation.
