To evaluate the safety and effectiveness of nonuse of abdominal drainage after hepatectomy.

PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, Web of Science, CBM, VPW, CNKI and Wanfang Database were searched for relevant randomized controlled trials about nonuse of abdominal drainage after hepatectomy published before June 2016. Literature screening, data extraction, and methodological quality evaluation were independently conducted by two investigators based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Heterogeneity study was performed by Meta analysis of fixed effect model and homogeneity study was performed by Meta analysis of random effect model.

A total of 6 papers, 665 patients were included, including 331 patients in no abdominal drainage group and 334 patients in abdominal drainage group. The Meta-analysis results showed that there was no significant difference between no abdominal drainage group and abdominal drainage group in the mortality, incidence of abdominal infection, abdominal effusion, bile leakage, wound infection, pulmonary infection and reoperation (RR=0.86, 0.51, 0.66, 0.60, 0.58, 0.85, 0.75; P>0.05). In addition, there was no significant difference between both groups in the length of postoperative hospital stay (WMD=0.40, P>0.05).

Conventional abdominal drainage may not be necessary for patients after hepatectomy.