Suit Blames Hospital for Death of Infant : Health: Mother says a fatal birth defect in newborn went undetected. An attorney for one of the defendants suggests that the girl switched babies.

A 17-year-old Northridge mother said Monday that doctors and nurses at Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar failed to diagnose and treat a congenital disorder that allegedly caused her son’s death five days after he was born.

Patricia Chavez is suing Los Angeles County, which operates Olive View, and three registries contracted by the hospital to hire nurses. She is seeking unspecified damages, charging that the medical center and its staff were negligent in failing to detect that the infant was born without an anus.

Chavez said she and her son were discharged with a clean bill of health.

An attorney for at least one of the defendants denied wrongdoing and contended that the young mother took her healthy son home, then somehow replaced the baby with an unhealthy infant who died.

The infant, Esteban Antonio Ruiz, died Feb. 5, 1990, at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, where Chavez and her father took him because he would not stop vomiting or crying. The boy died of sepsis after toxins spread through his body, according to the county coroner’s office.

“I just wish I could forget about it,” said Chavez, who appeared distraught Monday during a news conference at her home. “But you never can.”

Chavez’s attorney, Aileen Norvell Goldstein, contends that the baby’s life could have been saved if the disorder had been discovered in time. Surgery to correct the disorder would have allowed Esteban to lead a normal life, she said.

Chavez, who was 15 when Esteban was born Jan. 31, 1990, said she failed to notice the boy’s condition because “I don’t know nothing about babies.”

Chavez said she and Esteban’s father, Reynaldo Ruiz, 21, plan to marry when they can afford to.

Lawyers for the county declined to comment on the lawsuit filed in Superior Court.

Thomas V. O’Hagan, an attorney for Medical Specialists Temporary Personnel, one of the nursing registries named in the complaint, charged Monday that the mother is lying about the identity of the dead boy. Citing physical discrepancies, he said the boy Chavez bore was not the infant who died.

O’Hagan said Olive View took no tests, such as footprints, that could be used to verify the boy’s identity. He said an ultrasound test on Chavez when she was eight months pregnant showed that her fetus had two kidneys. The autopsy report said the dead boy had only one kidney.

Also, the lawyer said, the dead boy weighed a full pound more than Esteban did at birth--more, he said, than could be accounted for by natural growth--and that his body measurements were slightly different.

O’Hagan said Chavez may have taken another baby to the emergency room because its mother did not want to go to the hospital. In that case, he said, Esteban Chavez could be alive. He said he had no proof and did not know where the infant might be.

The attorney also said doctors and nurses noted on a patient medical chart that Esteban’s anus was present and that he had passed three bowel movements while at the hospital.

“I really can’t believe they’re saying that,” Chavez said. “I know I didn’t change the baby. And God knows that.”

Goldstein said she could not explain the notations on the chart. She said the ultrasound tape was reviewed Friday by a radiologist who told her it was impossible to tell the number of kidneys in the fetus.

Steven Wohlgemuth, a lawyer representing Staff Builders Inc. and Reliable Home Health Care, the other registries named in the suit, said he has not investigated the case enough to comment on O’Hagan’s claim. Wohlgemuth said he wondered how such a birth defect could have escaped detection by doctors and nurses, as well as the mother.

“It doesn’t make sense for so many professionals to have seen the baby at the hospital and for every single one of them to have missed what the plaintiff says is wrong with the child,” Wohlgemuth said. “I’m a dad. It’s kind of hard for me to imagine for somebody to miss that, especially the mother.”