Comparative efficacy of eight therapeutic methods in the treatment of left main coronary artery disease: a Bayesian network meta-analysis protocol

INTRODUCTION: As for coronary artery bypass grafting, although there are many direct comparative studies on different minimally invasive methods and traditional thoracotomy (off-pump/on-pump), there is still a lack of further ranking and summary of the efficacy of all surgical methods for left main coronary artery (LMCA) lesions. Combined with the current controversial views, this study aims to introduce a planned network meta-analysis (NMA) in detail, with a view to comparing the long-term efficacy and safety of multiple therapeutic methods in the treatment of patients with LMCA disease, and finally providing some reference bases for the best selection of clinical schemes. METHOD AND ANALYSIS: PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and The Cochrane Library databases will be collected from inception to June 2022 to compare the efficacy of different surgical methods in randomised controlled trials (RCTs) for LMCA disease. Main outcome endpoints: major adverse cardiovascular events, including mortality, myocardial infarction, stroke and revascularisation. Secondary outcome endpoints: (1) operation-related time, (2) the amount of blood transfusion, (3) complications including secondary thoracotomy, postoperative new atrial fibrillation, wound infection, (4) physiological score and psychological score, (5) time return to work and (6) total hospitalisation costs. The methodological quality of included RCTs will be assessed according to the Cochrane bias risk table. The Bayesian NMA will be conducted by STATA V.16.0. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The essence of this study is to summarise and analyse the original data without the approval of the ethics committee. Our research does not involve ethical issues, and the results will be published in peer-review journals. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42021274712.