AB18. Short term effects of laparoscopic versus open radical gastrectomy for early distal gastric cancer: Meta-analysis

Objective: To systematically review and evaluate the short term effects of laparoscopic versus open radical gastrectomy for early distal gastric cancer.

Methods: According to the inclusion criterion, Chinese studies were sought which compared the short term outcomes between laparoscopic and open radical gastrectomy for early distal gastric cancer. Two reviewers independently screened the studies for eligibility, evaluated the quality and extracted the data from the eligible studies, with confirmation by cross-checking. Divergences of opinion were settled by discussion or consulted by the expert. Data were processed by RevMan 5.0.

Results: Six studies involving 364 men, met the inclusion criteria, who were included in the Meta analysis. The baseline of patients’ characteristics was comparable in all the studies. By comparing the six common criteria, although it was 12.45 min longer than operation time, laparoscopic resection was associated with less blood loss (reduced by 82.83 mL, P<0.05), less time to flatus reduced by 0.85 d, P<0.05), less time to oral intake (reduced by 2.10 d, P<0.05), shorter duration of hospital stay (reduced by 3.27 d, P<0.05). And there was no significant difference in the number of harvested lymph nodes (P>0.05).

Conclusions: Compared to open surgery, laparoscopic resection is a safe and feasible technical for early distal gastric cancer, with less trauma, faster postoperative recovery, although operation time is longer. Because of few studies and small samples, more high quality trials with large samples and longer following-up are proposed.

Keywords: Early distal gastric cancer; laparoscopic assisted; Meta analysis