Does hospital-based transitional care reduce the postoperative complication in patients with enterostomy? A meta-analysis.

Objective: The objective of the study is to investigate whether hospital-based transitional care can reduce the postoperative complication in patients who received enterostomy or not by pooling the published prospective clinical studies. Materials and Methods: Prospective clinical studies related to hospital-based transitional care for reducing the postoperative complication in patients with enterostomy were searched in the electronic databases of PubMed, Medline, EMBASE, CNKI, and Wanfang. The postoperative complications in the experiment and control groups were extracted from the original studies and pooled by fixed effects model. The publication bias was evaluated by Begg's funnel plot and Egger's line regression test. Results: After searching through the electronic databases of PubMed, Medline, EMBASE, CNKI, and Wanfang, we finally included in eight studies with 600 cases related to hospital-based transitional care and postoperative complication in patients with enterostomy. The pooled result showed that hospital-based transitional care could significantly reduce the postoperative complication in patients with enterostomy (risk ratio = 0.42, 95% confidence interval: 1.0.32, 0.55, P = 0.005) by fixed effects model. The Begg's funnel plot demonstrated a litter left-right asymmetry, which indicated potential publication bias. Moreover, Egger's line regression test showed that there were significant publications (t = 3.04, P = 0.023). Conclusion: Hospital-based transitional care can significantly reduce the postoperative complication in patients with enterostomy.