Efficacy and safety of 2-micron laser versus conventional trans-urethral resection of bladder tumor for non-muscle-invasive bladder tumor: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Aim: To compare the clinical efficacy and safety of 2-micron laser and conventional trans-urethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT) in the treatment of non-muscle-invasive bladder tumor (NMIBT), providing evidence-based evidence for clinical treatment.

Materials And Methods: PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, CMB, CNKI, and WanFang databases were searched since their inception until December 2021 for all eligible randomized controlled trials (RCTs) related to 2-micron laser and TURBT for treating NMIBT. Two researchers independently screened the literature, extracted outcome indicators, and assessed the risk of bias according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Binary and continuous variables were calculated by relative risk (RR) and mean difference (MD) with 95% confidence interval (95%CI), respectively. RevMan 5.4 and Stata 15.0 software were used for all statistical analysis.

Results: A total of ten RCTs involving 1,163 patients were included: 596 cases in the 2-micron laser group and 567 cases in the TURBT group. The results of the meta-analysis revealed that 2-micron laser has advantages over the TURBT in operative duration (MD = -2.94, 95% confidence interval (CI) [-8.55, 2.68], P = 0.31), operative blood loss (MD = -19.93, 95%CI [-33.26, -6.60], P = 0.003), length of hospital stay (MD = -0.94, 95%CI [-1.38, -0.50], P < 0.001), post-operative bladder irrigation time (MD = -28.60, 95%CI [-50.60, -6.59], P = 0.01), period of catheterization days (MD = -1.07, 95%CI [-1.73, -0.40], P = 0.002), obturator nerve reflex (RR = -0.06, 95%CI [0.02, 0.15], P < 0.001), bladder perforation (RR = 0.14, 95%CI [0.06, 0.35], P < 0.001), and bladder irritation (RR = 0.30, 95%CI [0.20, 0.46], P < 0.001). There was no significant difference between the two surgical methods in post-operative urethral stricture and short-term recurrence of NMIBT.

Conclusion: Compared with TURBT, 2-micron laser may be safer and more effective for NMIBT management. However, these conclusions need to be validated through more high-quality RCTs because of the quality limitations and publication bias of the included studies.