Rapid rehabilitation effect on complications, wound infection, anastomotic leak, obstruction, and hospital re‐admission for gastrointestinal surgery subjects: A meta‐analysis

We performed a meta‐analysis to evaluate the effect of rapid rehabilitation on the curative effect of gastrointestinal surgery subjects. A systematic literature search up to October 2021 was done and 31 studies included 4448 subjects with gastrointestinal surgery at the start of the study: 2242 of them were provided with rapid rehabilitation and 2206 were standard care. They were reporting relationships about the effect of rapid rehabilitation on the curative effect of gastrointestinal surgery subjects. We calculated the odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) to assess the effect of rapid rehabilitation on the curative effect of gastrointestinal surgery subjects using the dichotomous method with a random‐ or fixed‐effect model. Rapid rehabilitation had significantly lower complications (OR, 0.62; 95% CI, 0.54‐0.71, P < .001) and wound infection (OR, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.55‐0.98, P = .03) compared with standard care in subjects with gastrointestinal surgery. However, rapid rehabilitation had no significant effect on the anastomotic leak (OR, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.66‐1.22, P = .49), obstruction (OR, 0.92; 95% CI, −0.64 to 1.31, P = .65), and hospital re‐admission (OR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.57‐1.08, P = .13) compared with standard care in subjects with gastrointestinal surgery. Rapid rehabilitation had significantly lower complications and wound infection, and had no significant effect on the anastomotic leak, obstruction, and hospital re‐admission compared with standard care in subjects with gastrointestinal surgery. Further studies are required to validate these findings.