A meta-analysis evaluating wound infections and other complications following distal versus complete gastrectomy for gastric cancer.

ABSTRACT

A meta-analysis investigation was carried out to measure the wound infections (WIs) and other postoperative problems (PPs) of distal gastrectomy (DG) compared with total gastrectomy (TG) for gastric cancer (GC). A comprehensive literature investigation till February 2023 was used and 1247 interrelated investigations were reviewed. The 12 chosen investigations enclosed 2896 individuals with GC in the chosen investigations' starting point, 1375 of them were TG, and 1521 were DG. Odds ratio (OR) in addition to 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were utilized to compute the value of the WIs and other PPs of DG compared with TG for GC by the dichotomous approaches and a fixed or random model. TG had significantly higher overall PP (OR, 1.58; 95% CI, 1.15-2.18, p = 0.005), WIs (OR, 1.69; 95% CI, 1.07-2.67, p = 0.02), peritoneal abscess (PA) (OR, 2.99; 95% CI, 1.67-5.36, p < 0.001), anastomotic leakage (AL) (OR, 1.90; 95% CI, 1.21-2.97, p = 0.005) and death (OR, 2.26; 95% CI, 1.17-4.37, p = 0.02) compared to those with DG in individuals with GC. TG had significantly higher overall PP, WIs, PA, AL and death compared to those with DG in individuals with GC. However, care must be exercised when dealing with its values because of the low sample size of some of the nominated investigations for the meta-analysis.