RESUMO
To systematically evaluate the expression of lymphovascular invasion (LVI) in predicting the clinical prognosis of patients after radical cystectomy.Methods The relevant search strategy,including and excluding criteria for the relevant literature were developed by two independent researchers.The study of tumor prognosis in the patients with LVI following radical cystectomy cancer were searched by computerized PubMed,EMBASE,Web of Science,Cochrane library,China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI),Wanfang and VIP citation database.The search period was setted from the beginning of establishment of library until May 2017,and the search language was English and Chinese.The methodological quality of the included studies was assessed by the NOS.Besides,the relationship between LVI and the clinical outcome in patients following radical cystectomy was calculated by RevMan 5.3 and Stata 12.0 software.Results A total of 18 related clinical studies were included,published from 2008 to 2017.There were 12 354 patients with bladder cancer,of which 4 272 cases of LVI,with a proportion rate 34.6％.The results showed that the patients with LVI in pathological sections had a lower overall survival rate (HR =1.26,95％ CI 1.16-1.38,P ＜0.001),recurrence-free survival (HR =1.27,95％ CI 1.06-1.52,P ＜0.001),cancer-specific survival rate (HR =1.30,95％CI 1.18-1.42,P ＜0.001).Egger's publication bias analysis showed no significant publication bias in terms of overall survival(P =0.636),recurrence-free survival (P =0.077),and cancer-specific survival (P =0.342).Conclusions LVI had a significant poor outcome in patients with radical resection of bladder cancer.It can be used as an independent risk factor to evaluate the postoperative prognosis of those patients,but more randomized controlled studies are still needed to make a further conformity in our completion.