Probiotics in patients with severe acute pancreatitis: a meta-analysis

Background This study focuses on probiotics in patients with severe acute pancreatitis. It assesses whether enteral feeding with probiotics use reduces infected necrosis and death in severe acute pancreatitis. Materials and methods We searched the Cochrane Library, Medline, Embase, and Chinese Biomedicine Database. Quality assessment and data extraction were done by two reviewers independently. The statistical analysis was performed by RevMan4.2.10 software. The result was expressed with odds ratio (OR) for the categorical variable. Results Four studies were included. The result showed that using probiotics could not reduce the risk of infection pancreatic necrosis (OR = 0.56, 95% CI [0.13, 2.35]). There is no significant difference between the two groups in mortality (OR = 0.83, 95% CI [0.14, 4.83]), the mean duration of hospital (WMD = −1.20, 95% CI [−13.13, 10.92]) and the required operation (OR = 0.59, 95% CI [0.11, 3.07]). Conclusion The present study showed the enteral feeding with probiotic could not reduce the infected necrosis and mortality. Future large-scale, high-quality, placebo-controlled, double-blind trials are needed.