ObjectiveTo evaluate safety and effectiveness of stent placement and emergency surgery in treatment of proximal colon cancer obstruction.MethodsThe PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, ClinicalTrials, CNKI, CBM, Wanfang Data, etc. were searched comprehensively. The literatures of Chinese and English randomized controlled trial and retrospective comparative study of stent placement and emergency surgery for the proximal colon cancer obstruction were retrieved. The RevMan 5.3 and Stata 12.0 softwares were used. The meta-analysis was made on the safety and effectiveness of these two treatments.ResultsA total of 9 literatures involving 636 patients were included, all of them were the retrospective studies, 4 of them only reported the clinical success rate and technical success rate. The technical success rate of stent placement was 0.94 [95% CI (0.91, 0.96)]. The clinical success rate was 0.90 [95% CI (0.87, 0.93)]. Compared with the emergency surgery group, the total complication rate and the temporary stoma rate were lower [OR=0.32, 95% CI (0.11, 0.94), P=0.04; OR=0.18, 95% CI (0.05, 0.65), P=0.009] and the hospital stay was shorter [MD=–2.97, 95% CI (–4.52, –1.41), P=0.000 2] in the stent placement group. The perioperative mortality rate, laparoscopic surgery rate, 5-year disease-free survival rate, and 5-year overall survival rate had no significant differences between these two groups (P>0.05).ConclusionCompared with emergency surgery, endoscopic stent placement for treatment of proximal colon cancer obstruction has a lower incidence of complications, temporary colostomy rate, shorter hospital stay, and it has no significant differences in mortality, laparoscopic surgery rate, and survival rate.