A lawsuit filed against Tripler Army Medical Center alleges negligence on its part caused the catastrophic injuries suffered at birth by a 2-year-old child.

The lawsuit, by David and Celia McCraw, alleges that while Celia McCraw was in labor, a fetal heart monitor showed that the child began experiencing "severe and repetitive decelerations of her heart rate." The McCraws' daughter, Kayla, was born Nov. 11, 2005.

Those symptoms indicated that, for an unknown reason, the baby "was suffering a deprivation of oxygen that necessitated her immediate delivery by caesarean section," the suit alleges.

But McCraw, who was 18 at the time, was allowed to remain in delivery for an additional 10 hours, and when the child was born, "the doctor discovered that the reason for the fetal distress was a tight nuchal (umbilical) cord around Kayla McCraw's neck causing asphyxiation," the parents alleged in the lawsuit.

The baby needed to be resuscitated, requiring "a tube to be placed in her airway to breathe (intubation)," the suit said.

But the tube was placed in the baby's esophagus instead of her trachea "for almost a half-hour before the mistake was identified," causing further injury from lack of oxygen to the baby, said the lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages.

Kayla McCraw has since been diagnosed with bilateral cerebral palsy and other physical problems, the lawsuit said, and has received continuous physical, occupational and speech therapy.

"At almost two years of age Kayla Mae McCraw's motor development is severely abnormal and she still cannot sit up unassisted," the parents said in the suit.

Representatives of Tripler did not respond to telephone requests for comment yesterday.

In 2006, the family of a 2-year-old boy who suffered brain damage at birth at Tripler was awarded a $16.5 million court judgment because the boy was given carbon dioxide instead of oxygen at birth in 2005.

Last year, the family of a 3-year-old boy who suffered massive brain damage while being treated for a heart defect at Tripler in 2004 was awarded a court judgment of $9.4 million.