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INTRODUCTION: Nonfunctioning pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (NF-PNETs) have been diagnosed increasingly often but still represent rare pancreatic neoplasms. Surgery is a potentially curative approach for patients with NF-PNETs. In recent years, minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has been applied more frequently for surgical resection of NF-PNETs. The evidence for using MIS for NF-PNETs is still being determined and controversial. MATERIALS AND METHODS: PubMed, Cochrane Library, and the Web of Science database were searched systematically from its inception to July 2023. All studies comparing MIS versus open surgery (OPS) of NF-PNETs were included. The primary outcomes were the incidence of overall postoperative complications and pancreas-specific complications postoperative pancreatic fistula (POPF) and delayed gastric emptying (DGE). The secondary measures were duration of operation, intraoperative blood loss, and length of postoperative hospital stay. Pooled results are presented as odds ratios (OR) or mean difference (MD) with a 95% CI. RESULTS: Five observational studies with a total of 1178 patients were included in the final analysis. The meta-analysis indicated that MIS attained less intraoperative blood loss (MD=-58.59, 95% CI -92.76 to -24.41, P<0.01) and shorter length of hospital stay (MD=-3.07, 95% CI -5.28 to -0.87, P<0.01) in contrast to open surgery for NF-PNETs. There were no significant differences concerning operative time (MD=52.04, 95% CI -8.74 to 112.81, P=0.67), overall postoperative complications (OR=0.78, 95% CI 0.59-1.03, P=0.08), POPF (OR=0.99, 95% CI 0.66-1.47, P=0.94), and DGE (OR=0.58, 95% CI 0.58-1.42, P=0.67). CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates that minimally invasive surgery for NF-PNETs is safe and associated with a considerably shorter postoperative hospital stay. Further studies are needed to verify the evidence.
Wei et al. (Fri,) studied this question.