Safety and feasibility of fast track surgery in operations for gastric cancer: a meta analysis

Objective To estimate the safety and feasibility of fast track surgery (FTS) in operations for gastric cancer. Methods The Cochrane library, PubMed, EMBASE, Chinese biomedical literature database, China journal full text database, Chinese scientific journals full text database were searched with the key words of “gastric cancer”, “gastric carcinoma”, “FTS”, “fast track surgery”, “enhanced recovery after surgery”, “ERAS”, “胃癌”, and “快速康复外科”. The search was finished in April, 2011. Randomized controlled trials of FTS for patients with gastric cancer were included. Two reviewers evaluated the quality of the included studies and extracted the data independently. Meta analysis was performed by RevMan 5.1.2 software.Results Fourteen randomized controlled trials involving 1270 patients were included. The results of meta analysis showed that FTS could significantly shorten the first exhaust time (MD= -0.39, 95% confidence interval: -0.55-0.22, P<0.05). FTS could lighten the postoperative stress and relatively enhance the immunity.Conclusion Compared with conventional methods, FTS could speed up the rehabilitation for patients with gastric cancer postoperatively without increasing the adverse reactions.