Chengqiang Mo, Jinchao Liu, Wulin Tan, Zhou Yu, Xu Chen, Xiaopeng Mao, Shaopeng Qiu
Objective: To compare perioperative and postoperative outcomes of laparoendoscopic single-site (LESS) surgery and conventional transperitoneal laparoscopic varicocele ligation (CTL-VL) for varicocele.
Material and methods: PubMed, Medline, EMBASE, ISI Web of Knowledge, Cochrane Library, Chinese biomedicine and China Knowledge Resource Integrated (CNKI) databases were searched for studies released prior to February 2014. References of included studies were also searched to identify additional, potentially relevant studies. We analyzed the data using RevMan 5.1.
Results: Ten randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and seven non-randomized controlled trials (NRCTs) were included, involving 1,183 patients. LESS group showed longer operative time but shorter hospital stay, shorter time to return to normal activity and lower total postoperative complications incidence. No significant difference was found in terms of blood loss, VAS pain score, pregnancy and improvement of semen parameters. Patients’ satisfaction was significantly better in LESS group. Sensitivity analysis showed similar results to the original analysis, and no evidence of publication bias was showed.
Conclusions: LESS showed comparable outcomes to that of CTL-VL, but it takes shorter to recover, has fewer postoperative complications and shows advantages in patients’ satisfaction potentially for cosmesis and less pain. More high-quality, multicenter and long-term RCTs are required to verify the findings.
