OBJECTIVE: According to the classical knowledge risk of respiratory distress more often in neonates who were born by ceserean delivery. The purpose of this study was to determine whether respiratory distres is associated with ceserean delivery, gestation week and sex of neonate. Study Design: We noted delivery type, gestational age and sex of all newborn's who were delivered after 37 gestation weeks and born in VKV Amerikan Hospital between years 1998-2005. We reached the data of babies who developed respiratory distress from NICU database. RESULTS: In this 8 years period 1101 vajinal delivery (15%),6243 ceserean delivery (85%) were occured of total 7344 babies. Sex of babies were 3613 female (%49), 3731 male (51%). 72 of babies developed respiratory distres (0.9%), 5 of them were delivered vajinal (0.4%) 67 were delivered by ceserean (0.9%) (p=0.054). 61 of these babies developed transient tachypnea of the newborn (TTN) (0.8%) and 11 developed respiratory distress syndrome(RDS) (0.1%). 5 babies were delivered vaginally, 56 babies were delivered by ceserean of 61who developed TTN ( p=0.13). All 11 babies were delivered by ceserean who were developed RDS. 63% of RDS (7/11) were male (p=0.39). 83% of TTN (51/61) were male (p=0.0001). Who developed respiratory distress (TTN+RDS) were male 80%. 4 of 11 babies with RDS were born at 37th gestational week (36%), 7 were born 38 and after 38 gestational weeks. 17 of 61 babies with TTN were born at 37th gestational week (27%) 44 were born 38 and after gestational weeks. CONCLUSIONS: In this study we found respiratory distress ratio %0.9 as known 1% in classical literature knowledge. But contrary to classical knowledge there were no statistically differences between vaginal and ceserean deliveries for developing respiratory distress. But in male newborns respiratory distress ratio was higher than females.

Keywords: ceserean delivery, respiratory distress, respiratory distress ssyndrome, transient tachypnea of the newborn