ObjectivesTo systematically review the efficacy of laparoscopic hepatectomy (LH) and open hepatectomy (OH) on the hepatocellular carcinoma patients with cirrhosis.MethodsPubMed, EMbase, Web of Science, The Cochrane Library, CBM, CNKI, WanFang Data and VIP databases were searched online to collect the cohort studies of LHvs.OH on hepatocellular carcinoma patients with cirrhosis from inception to November 31st, 2017. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies, then, meta-analysis was performed by using RevMan 5.3 software.ResultsA total of 15 cohort studies involving 1 720 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that: compared with OH, LH had less blood loss (MD=–226.94, 95%CI –339.87 to –114.01, P<0.000 1), lower transfusion rate (OR=0.48, 95%CI 0.27 to 0.83,P=0.009), less occurrence of complications (OR=0.32, 95%CI 0.23 to 0.45, P<0.000 01), shorter postoperative hospital stay (MD=–3.66, 95%CI –5.19 to –2.14,P<0.000 01), lower mortality rate (OR=0.47, 95%CI 0.24 to 0.92,P=0.03), wider surgical margin (OR=0.78, 95%CI 0.20 to 1.36, P=0.009), higher 1, 3 and 5-year survival rate (OR=2.47, 95%CI 1.35 to 4.51, P=0.003; OR=1.62, 95%CI 1.11 to 2.36, P=0.01; OR=1.58, 95%CI 1.19 to 2.10, P=0.002, respectively) and 1-year disease free survival rate (OR=1.69, 95%CI=1.20 to 2.39, P=0.003). There were no significant differences in operation time (MD=28.64, 95%CI –7.53 to 64.82, P=0.12), tumor size (MD=–0.37, 95%CI –0.75 to 0.02, P=0.06), 3-year disease free survival rate (OR=1.14, 95%CI 0.86 to 1.51, P=0.36) and 5-year disease free survival rate (OR=0.99, 95%CI 0.77 to 1.28, P=0.97) between the two groups.ConclusionsThe perioperation and short-term postoperative outcomes of LH are significant in HCC patients with cirrhosis, and which have good long-term prognosis. Due to limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high quality studies are required to verify above conclusions.