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Payout for girl left blind after diagnosis failure
Hospital agrees out-of-court settlement
A GIRL who lost her eyesight after medics failed to spot a deteriorating condition has been offered an out-of-court compensation settlement.
Maya Revah, of Aspern Grove, Belsize Park, weighed little more than a bag of sugar when she was born 17 weeks prematurely at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead in January 1989.
She developed Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), which went undetected for four months after she was transferred to University College London Hospital.
The missed diagnosis was challenged in the High Court this week as Ms Revah’s barrister, Robert Glancy QC, argued that her condition should have been spotted by doctors before it became untreatable.
On Tuesday, the case was resolved when the North Central London Strategic Health Authority agreed a settlement out of court which is expected to amount to 70 per cent of Ms Revah’s claim.
It is expected be a six-figure sum and could run to more than half-a-million pounds.
The agreement was made on the basis that the health authority was not liable for negligence.
The money will compensate for her loss of earnings and the cost her care will add up to over her lifetime.
Ms Revah, who, at 18, is now completely blind, would still have some sight if doctors had carried out fortnightly eye-tests as laid out in hospital guidelines, said Mr Glancy. Instead, her condition went untreated for four months.
ROP only affects premature babies and occurs when blood vessels in the retina do not develop properly because of the short period of gestation in the womb.
Mr Glancy argued that the condition was missed in a test taken a week after doctors first could have been able to diagnose it.
It wasn’t until she was four months old that doctors realised something was wrong, but an emergency operation carried out to try to save her vision was too late.
She was later taken home by her mother Larraine Revah, a tenants’ leader, and her father BenJamin Revah.
Mr Glancy told the court that when Maya was born doctors were on the “cusp of knowledge” about her condition following groundbreaking research carried out in the United States.
But UCLH claimed knowledge of ROP was so limited in the late 1980s that it was very difficult to pick up. Sarah Vaughn Jones, who worked for the body that ran UCLH at the time of Ms Revah’s birth, said because treatment was in such early stages the hospital had not been negligent. |
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