ObjectiveTo systematically evaluate the clinical effect and safety of robotic inguinal hernia repair (robotic surgery).MethodsThe control studies on robotic surgery in treatment of inguinal hernia were searched in the English databases (PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase) and Chinese databases (CNKI, Wanfang, VIP). The search time was from the establishment of the database to December 2020. After screening the literatures according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the Jadad scale was used to evaluate the literature quality of randomized controlled studies, the Newcastle-Ottawa scale (NOS) was used to evaluate the literature quality of the retrospective studies, and the RevMan5.3 software was used for meta-analysis.ResultsTwelve relevant articles with a total sample size of 7 661 cases that met the criteria were included in this study, including 1 746 cases of robotic inguinal hernia repair (robotic surgery), 4 361 cases of open inguinal hernia repair (open surgery), and 1 554 cases of laparoscopic inguinal hernia repair (laparoscopic surgery). The surgery time of the robotic surgery was longer than that of the traditional (including open and laparoscopic) surgery (P<0.01), open surgery (P<0.01) or laparoscopic surgery (P<0.01); The hospitalization cost of the robotic surgery was higher than that of traditional surgery (P<0.01) and open surgery (P<0.01). However, the readmission rate of the robotic surgery was lower than that of the traditional surgery (P<0.01) and open surgery (P<0.01). There were no significant differences in the other indicators between the robotic surgery and open surgery or laparoscopic surgery (P>0.05).ConclusionRobotic inguinal hernia repair is safe and feasible, which provides us a new way to treat inguinal hernia.