Percutaneous catheter drainage versus needle aspiration for liver abscess management: an updated systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression of randomized controlled trials

Liver abscess is a life-threatening condition. Percutaneous catheter drainage (PCD) and percutaneous needle aspiration (PNA) are both minimally invasive techniques used to manage liver abscess. We aim to compare both techniques' efficacy and safety. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis involving randomized controlled trials (RCTs) from PubMed, Embase, Scopus, WOS, Cochrane, and Google scholar until July 22 , 2022. We pooled dichotomous outcomes using risk ratio (RR) presented with a 95% confidence interval (CI) and continuous outcomes using mean difference (MD) with 95% CI. We registered our protocol with ID: CRD42022348755. We included 15 RCTs with 1,626 patients. Pooled RR favored PCD (RR: 1.21 with 95% CI: 1.11, 1.31, P