Objective:To study the effect of early enteral nutrition(EN) and total parenteral nutrition (TPN) in patients with severe acute pancreatitis by a mata analysis.
Methods:Randomized controlled trials of TPN and early EN in patients with severe acute pancreatitis were searched in Medline,Pubmed and Embase from Jan 1970 to June 2009,and Cochrane Library (Issue 2, 2009). Seven studies were enrolled into the analysis. The detail about the trial design,characters of the subjects and results of the studies were reviewed by two independent authors and analysed by using Revman 5.0.18 software.
Results:Compared with TPN,early EN was associated with a significantly lower incidence of pancreatic infections (OR=0.38,95% CI:0.18～0.82, P=0.01),organ failure (OR=0.43,95% CI:0.23～0.79, P=0.007), fewer surgical interventions (OR=0.34,95% CI:0.18～0.63, P=0.0006) and mortaily (OR=0.41, 95%  CI:0.19～0.88, P=0.02). However, there was no significant difference in total infections ［OR=0.43，95% CI（0.17，1.10）,P=0.08］between patients with TPN and early EN.
Conclusions:Early EN could be the preferred nutrition feeding method for patients with severe acute pancreatitis.