A DECIMAL point in the wrong place led to a baby boy being given a massive overdose of a paralysing drug at Salisbury District Hospital.

The prescribing blunder meant the boy, who was born 10 weeks premature, received a “tenfold overdose” of the powerful muscle relaxant.

Now aged about 10, he is gravely disabled - but the judge’s ruling means he will go without a penny in compensation from the NHS.

Mrs Justice Yip expressed sympathy for the boy – referred in the case as baby A, but said there was no proven link between the 2008 overdose and his lifelong injuries.

The judge said the boy was only a few hours old and in the hospital’s special care baby unit when he was given the overdose.

“Unfortunately, when the dose was prescribed, a decimal point was put in the wrong place,” she told London’s High Court.

“That caused him to receive 10 times the recommended dose. The prescription should have been cross-checked, but the error was not identified.”

Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust admitted negligence and apologised for the mistake, the judge added.

But it fought the boy’s damages claim every inch of the way, insisting the overdose did not cause his catastrophic brain damage.

The boy’s lawyers pointed out that he was born in a reasonably good state and only later fell into a critical condition.

“It is natural to suspect a link between the significant overdose and his severe neurological damage,” the judge said.

But she added that, as he struggled to breathe, he needed the drug to stop him fighting against the ventilator.

Even the correct dose of the drug would have been enough to “bring about total paralysis,” she told the court.

The likely cause of his brain damage was acute breathing difficulties, a collapse in his blood pressure and oxygen starvation, she ruled.

What happened to him was “not something so wholly unexpected” in a premature baby that it could only be explained by the overdose.

By midnight on the day of his birth, before he was given the overdose, he was already “very sick” and doctors feared he was close to death.

The judge said: “I have the greatest sympathy for his parents who have witnessed their son suffer an adverse outcome after a significant medical error.

“However, a close analysis of the evidence does not establish the necessary causal connection between the two.

“He was a vulnerable baby by reason of his prematurity and early rupture of the membranes.

“He developed severe respiratory distress syndrome, leading to significant deterioration in his condition by midnight.”

The judge concluded: “I fully recognise the importance of my decision to this boy and his parents.

“It may be of little comfort to them, but I have looked very closely at all the evidence before reaching my conclusions.

“Having done so, I find that causation is not established. I must therefore dismiss this claim”.

The court heard earlier that the boy is partially paralysed in all four limbs and his speech and intellect are impaired.

“He has sufficient insight to recognise his disabilities and differences with his peers,” said the judge.

“It is very sad to read of the distress this causes him”.

Had he won his case against the trust, the boy’s compensation award would almost certainly have run into millions of pounds.

However, Mrs Justice Yip’s decision means he will receiving nothing.

Following the hearing, Cara Charles-Barks, chief executive of Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust said: “Whilst this has been a very difficult case for all involved and we are sorry that there was an error in drug administration to baby A on the night of 20/21 February 2008, the court has decided that the effect of the overdose was not related to the brain damage that baby A sadly suffered around the time of birth.”