ObjectivesTo systematically review the efficacy and safety of hydrotalcite in the treatment of reflux esophagitis (RE).MethodsCBM, CNKI, WanFang Data, VIP, PubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science and Scopus databases were searched online to collect randomized clinical trials (RCTs) of hydrotalcite or hydrotalcite plus PPI versus PPI alone in the treatment of RE from inception to June 30th, 2017. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies. Meta-analysis was performed by RevMan 5.3 software.ResultsA total of 15 RCTs involving 1 655 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that: after 4-8 weeks of treatment, there was no significant difference between hydrotalcite vs. PPI regarding RE healing rates (RR=0.87, 95%CI 0.76 to 1.00, P=0.05). However, there were significant increases in RE healing rate (RR=1.22, 95%CI 1.14 to 1.31, P<0.001) and symptom relief rate (RR=1.36, 95%CI 1.12 to 1.66,P<0.01) between hydrotalcite plus PPIvs. PPI alone. Similar increases of RE healing rate (RR=1.16, 95%CI 1.08 to 1.25, P<0.001) and symptom relief rate (RR=1.12, 95%CI 1.04 to 1.20,P<0.01) were seen in patients with refractory RE. No increase of adverse effect rate was shown with hydrotalcite or hydrotalcite plus PPI compared to PPI alone.ConclusionsCompared with PPI alone, hydrotalcite plus PPI confers a statistically significant improvement of healing rate and symptom relief rate, while it does not increase adverse effect rate. Due to limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high quality studies are required to verify above conclusions.