Uncut Roux-en-Y might reduce the rate of reflux gastritis after radical distal gastrectomy: An evidence mapping from a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: To evaluate the efficacy, safety, technical feasibility, and effect of reducing the incidence of reflux gastritis from uncut Roux-en-Y (URY) reconstruction after radical distal gastrectomy (RDG) for gastric cancer. METHODS: A literature search was conducted in PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, and WanFang databases until June 30, 2020, to identify studies comparing URY reconstruction with other gastrointestinal tract reconstruction methods after RDG. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) and the Cochrane Collaboration's risk for bias assessment tool were used to assess the risk of bias. The study was performed using review manager RevMan 5.3.0 software. RESULTS: A total of 35 original studies (six randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and 29 cohort studies) were included in this analysis with a total of 4100 patients. For reflux gastritis, URY anastomosis was significantly superior to the other four types of anastomoses (Billroth-I (odds ratio (OR) = 0.16 [0.10, 0.27], P < 0.00001); Billroth-II (OR = 0.32 [0.20, 0.51], P < 0.00001); Billroth-II with Braun (OR = 0.14 [0.007, 0.26], P < 0.00001), and Roux-en-Y (OR = 0.59 [0.38, 0.91], P = 0.02)). Furthermore, URY anastomosis was better than Billroth-II with Braun (OR = 0.07, 95%confidence interval (CI): [0.02, 0.28], P = 0.0001) and Billroth-II (OR = 0.14, 95%CI: [0.09, 0.24], P < 0.00001) anastomoses for preventing bile reflux. In addition, for anastomotic leakage, URY anastomosis was significantly superior to Roux-en-Y (OR = 0.34, 95%CI: [0.13, 0.87], P = 0.02) anastomosis, and no statistically significant difference between URY and the other three reconstruction methods was found. The postoperative hospital stay of patients receiving URY anastomosis was substantially shorter than those receiving Billroth-II with Braun (MD: 2.84, 95%CI: [-3.16, -1.80], P < 0.00001), Bollroth-II (MD: 1.23, 95%CI: [-2.10, -0.37], P = 0.005) and Roux-en-Y (MD: 1.98, 95%CI: [-2.17, -1.78], P < 0.00001) anastomoses. CONCLUSION: URY reconstruction significantly reduce the rate of reflux gastritis after RDG, and it was a more favorable reconstruction method after RDG for its operative simplicity, safety, and reduced postoperative complications especially in Roux-en-Y stasis syndrome. Large sample size cohort studies and well-designed RCTs are needed for further confirmation of our findings. OTHER: This work was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (No.81871962), Industry-University-Research Innovation Fund in the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (No. 2018A01013) and the Autonomous Intelligent Unmanned System (No. 62088101). This study was registered with PROSPERO (CRD42020200906).