Standard versus extralevator abdominoperineal excision and oncologic outcomes for patients with distal rectal cancer: A meta-analysis.

Background: The role of extralevator abdominoperineal excision (ELAPE) for distal rectal cancer remains controversial, and the procedure is not widely accepted or practiced.

Methods: An electronic search of Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science, and similar databases for articles in English was performed from the inception of the study until October 31, 2017. Two reviewers extracted information and independently assessed the quality of included studies by the methodological index for nonrandomized studies, then data were analyzed with Review Manager 5.3 software and Stata version 12.0 software.

Results: Our meta-analysis included 17 studies with 3479 patients, of whom 1915 (55.0%) underwent ELAPE and 1564 (44.0%) underwent abdominoperineal excision (APE). Compared with patients undergoing APE, patients undergoing ELAPE had a significant reduced risk of no more than 3 years local recurrence (LR) (risk ratio [RR] = 0.27, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.08-0.94), 3-year mortality (odds ratio [OR] = 0.45, 95% CI = 0.20-0.97), intraoperative bowel perforation (IBP) involvement (RR = 0.48, 95% CI = 0.31-0.74), and circumferential resection margin (CRM) positivity (RR = 0.66, 95% CI = 0.43-1.00) at the threshold level.

Conclusions: The application of ELAPE is more effective in reducing the chance of 3 years LR, mortality, IBP involvement and CRM positivity than conventional APE, and worthy of being widely applied in surgical treatment of the distal rectal cancer.