Meta-Analysis
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Meta-Anal. Dec 26, 2015; 3(6): 284-294
Published online Dec 26, 2015. doi: 10.13105/wjma.v3.i6.284
Antireflux surgery vs medical treatment for gastroesophageal reflux disease: A meta-analysis
Ya Jiang, Wen-Xia Cui, Ying Wang, Ding Heng, Jia-Cheng Tan, Lin Lin
Ya Jiang, Wen-Xia Cui, Ying Wang, Ding Heng, Jia-Cheng Tan, Lin Lin, Department of Gastroenterology, First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 210029, Jiangsu Province, China
Author contributions: Jiang Y and Cui WX acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data, drafting the article, final approval; Wang Y, Heng D and Tan JC interpretation of data, revising the article, final approval; Lin L conception and design of the study, critical revision, final approval.
Supported by The Project of Jiangsu Province Department of Health, No. H201328; the Project of Jiangsu Provincial Administration of traditional Chinese Medicine, No. LZ13225; the Postgraduates’ Innovation Program supported by the Education Department of Jiangsu Province, No. Jx22013279.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors deny any conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Lin Lin, MD, PhD, Department of Gastroenterology, First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, 300 Guangzhou Road, Nanjing 210029, Jiangsu Province, China. lin9100@aliyun.com
Telephone: +86-25-68136920 Fax: +86-25-83674636
Received: June 9, 2015
Peer-review started: June 11, 2015
First decision: August 4, 2015
Revised: September 29, 2015
Accepted: October 23, 2015
Article in press: October 27, 2015
Published online: December 26, 2015
Processing time: 198 Days and 11.2 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The advantage of our study is its systematic approach to identifying all randomized controlled trials comparing surgical intervention with medical therapy for gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). We conducted the subgroup analyses based on follow-up periods and concluded that antireflux surgery may in some ways be more effective than medicine over short to medium follow-up periods, but its effect declined over time. We also completed analyses for the percentage of time pH < 4 and DeMeester scores. Both analyses favored surgery over medical treatment. However, long-term studies are still required to determine whether surgical intervention is better than medicine in treating GERD patients.