The Effectiveness and Safety of Barbed Sutures in the Bariatric Surgery: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: Knotless barbed sutures can eliminate knot tying during the bariatric surgery (BS). Since effects reported on patients and surgeons are ambiguous, this study is determined to identify the effectiveness and safety of knotless barbed suture in BS.

Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Register of Clinical Studies, and ClinicalTrials.gov were searched for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and cohort studies comparing barbed sutures with conventional sutures in BS (until July 2, 2018). Quality assessment was conducted due to Cochrane's recommendations. Review Manager was applied to analyze the data, and we performed subgroup analyses based on study design type and surgery type.

Results: A total of four cohort studies (25,505 patients, low to moderate risk of bias) and four RCTs (1480 patients, low to moderate risk of bias) proved eligible. BS includes laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy. Comparing to conventional suture, pooling data showed that suture time (MD = - 4.87, 95%CI - 8.82 to - 0.92, P = 0.02) and operative time (MD = - 7.88, 95%CI - 14.10 to - 1.67, P = 0.01) declined significantly in the barbed group. Although no significant change was in the overall postoperative complications and hospital stay, subgroup analysis of RCTs suggested that significantly, fewer bleeding conditions happened in barbed groups.

Conclusions: Although quality of all the studies was relatively moderate and the number of the included studies was limited, the barbed suture may have the potentiality to be an effective and reliable technique and extend the application in other bariatric surgeries. More evidence with randomized design, larger sample sizes, and longer follow-up need to compel validations of this state-of-the-art in the future.

Keywords: Barbed suture; Bariatric surgery; Surgical technique; Systematic review.