Efficacy and safety of preoperative biliary drainage in patients undergoing pancreaticoduodenectomy: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of preoperative biliary drainage (PBD) on outcomes of pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) in patients with biliary obstruction. We searched PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane library, and Web of Science from database inception to 11 March 2021. We used the ROBINS-I tool and Cochrane risk of bias tool 2.0 to assess the risk of bias. The data were statistically analyzed using the RevMan software (Version 5.4). In all, 43 studies, including 23,076 patients, were analyzed, of which 13,922 patients were treated with PBD and 9154 were treated with no preoperative biliary drainage (NPBD). The morbidity, infection morbidity, and postoperative pancreatic fistulae (POPF) in patients undergoing PBD, were significantly higher than those in patients undergoing NPBD. Further, PBD may lead to a significantly worse 2- and 3-year overall survival (OS) rates. In subgroup meta-analysis, the differences in morbidity, POPF, and OS outcomes lost significance between the PBD and NPBD groups when the mean total serum bilirubin (TSB) concentration was below 15 mg/dl. Routine PBD still cannot be recommended because it showed no beneficial effect on postoperative outcomes. However, in patients with < 15 mg/dl TSB concentration, PBD tends to be a better choice.