Complication incidence of EUS-guided pancreas biopsy: A systematic review and meta-analysis of 11 thousand population from 78 cohort studies.

A systematic review and meta-analysis were performed to estimate the incidence of possible complications following EUS-guided pancreas biopsy. Pancreatic cancer has a very poor prognosis with a high fatality rate. Early diagnosis is important to improve the prognosis of pancreatic cancer. We searched Pubmed, Embase, Web of Science, and Scopus databases for studies published from inception to Augest, 2018. Meta-analysis were conducted with random-effect models and heterogeneity was calculated with the Q, I2 and τ2 statistics. We enrolled 78 studies from 71 articles in the meta-analysis, comprising 11,652 patients. Pooled data showed that the whole complication incidences were low 0.210 × 10-4(95%CI -0.648 × 10-4, 1.068 × 10-4). And they were in bleeding 0.002 × 10-4 (95%CI -0.092 × 10-4, 0.097 × 10-4), pancreatitis 0.002 (95%CI -0.082 × 10-4, 0.086 × 10-4), abdominal pain 0 (95%CI -0.037 × 10-4, 0.038 × 10-4), fever 0 (95%CI -0.032 × 10-4, 0. 032 × 10-4), infection 0 (95%CI -0.030 × 10-4, 0.031 × 10-4), duodenal perforation 0 (95%CI -0.033 × 10-4, 0.034 × 10-4), pancreatic fistula 0 (95%CI -0.029 × 10-4, 0.029 × 10-4), abscess 0 (95%CI -0.029 × 10-4, 0.029 × 10-4) and sepsis 0 (95%CI -0.029 × 10-4, 0.030 × 10-4). Subgroup analysis based on the tumor size, site, needle type and tumor style also showed robust results. The pooled data showed EUS-guided pancreas biopsy could be a safe approach for the diagnosis of pancreatic lesions. More large-scale studies will be necessary to confirm the findings across different population.