ABSTRACT
Provision of standard childbirth facilities has been considered as an important healthcare issue for a long time. The physical and psychological states of mothers are important factors determining the fate of delivery. Therefore, several programs have been established to decrease the mother-child mortality rates and the complications of delivery. One of the most common approaches for controlling the pain of delivery is application of local anesthesia such as epidural, spinal, or a combination of these methods. It has been shown that complications of epidural anesthesia are less than other methods of local anesthesia employed for the painless delivery. In this study, a comparison is made between two groups of 80 neonates delivered by either NVD or EU. A form was designed for collection of data including Apgar score at first minute, need for CPR, NICU admission, FHR variability, breast feeding time, duration of hospital stay, and neonatal reflexes. The data were analyzed by chi-square and fisher tests using SPSS software. There was no significant difference between the neonates born by EA or NVD at the 95% confidence level. Based on these findings it could be concluded that epidural anesthesia for delivery does not lead to neonatal complications more than that of NVD without pain control. Therefore, this method could be recommended to mothers, who choose elective cesarean section to avoid the pain of childbirth