ObjectiveTo systematically review the efficacy and safety of irinotecan as neoadjuvant chemotherapy (INAC) plus radical surgery (RS) for cervical cancer. MethodsWe searched databases including PubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library (Issue 10, 2014), CBM, CNKI, VIP and WanFang Data to collect clinical studies on INAC plus RS versus RS alone or other neoadjuvant chemotherapy drugs plus RS in the treatment of cervical cancer. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies. Then, meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3 software. ResultsA total of 6 studies (4 RCTs and 2 CCTs) involving 596 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that, compared with the RS alone group, the INAC group was superior in reducing operation time (MD=-16.17, 95%CI -21.88 to -10.46, P<0.000 01), intraoperative blood loss (MD=-39.56, 95%CI -51.96 to -27.17, P<0.000 01), increasing 3-years OS (OR=0.29, 95%CI 0.15 to 0.57, P<0.000 3), reducing incidence of positive parametrical involvement (OR=0.27, 95%CI 0.12 to 0.60, P=0.001) and incidence of lymphovascular space invasion (OR=0.24, 95%CI 0.09 to 0.61, P=0.003). However, there were no significant differences in the incidence of lymph node metastasis (OR=0.55, 95%CI 0.29 to 1.03, P=0.06) and positive surgical margin (OR=0.33, 95%CI 0.03 to 3.86, P=0.38) between the two groups. Compared with the paclitaxel plus RS group, there were no significant differences for the INAC group in the effective rate (OR=1.58, 95%CI 0.20 to 12.32, P=0.66) and the incidence of more than grade Ⅲ adverse events (OR=2.27, 95%CI 0.62 to 8.27, P=0.21). ConclusionINAC is effective and tolerable in the treatment of cervical cancer. Due to the limitation of quantity and quality of the included studies, more high quality studies are needed to verify the above conclusion.