Efficacy of gastric decompression after pancreatic surgery: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Gastric decompression after pancreatic surgery has been a routine procedure for many years. However, this procedure has often been waived in non-pancreatic abdominal surgeries. The aim of this meta-analysis was to determine the necessity of routine gastric decompression (RGD) following pancreatic surgery.

PubMed, the Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and Web of Science were systematically searched to identify relevant studies comparing outcomes of RGD and no gastric decompression (NGD) after pancreatic surgery. The overall complications, major complications, mortality, delayed gastric emptying (DGE); clinically relevant DGE (CR-DGE), postoperative pancreatic fistula (POPF), clinically relevant POPF (CR-POPF), secondary gastric decompression, and the length of hospital stay were evaluated.

A total of six comparative studies with a total of 940 patients were included. There were no differences between RGD and NGD groups in terms of the overall complications (OR = 1.73, 95% CI: 0.60–5.00; p = 0.31), major complications (OR = 2.22, 95% CI: 1.00–4.91; p = 0.05), incidence of secondary gastric decompression (OR = 1.19, 95% CI: 0.60–2.02; p = 0.61), incidence of overall DGE (OR = 2.74; 95% CI: 0.88–8.56; p = 0.08; I² = 88%), incidence of CR-POPF (OR = 1.28, 95% CI: 0.76–2.15; p = 0.36), and incidence of POPF (OR = 1.31, 95% CI: 0.81–2.14; p = 0.27). However, RGD was associated with a higher incidence of CR-DGE (OR = 5.45; 95% CI: 2.68–11.09; p < 0.001, I² = 35%), a higher rate of mortality (OR = 1.53; 95% CI: 1.05–2.24; p = 0.03; I² = 83%), and a longer length of hospital stay (WMD = 5.43, 95% CI: 0.30 to 10.56; p = 0.04; I² = 93%).

Routine gastric decompression in patients after pancreatic surgery was not associated with a better recovery, and may be unnecessary after pancreatic surgery.