Abstract： Objective To systematically review the clinical efficacy of transanastomotic pancreatic ductal stents placement after pancreaticoduodenectomy.Methods According to the Cochrane reviewers handbook (version 5.0 ),literatures were retrived from PubMed,Embase,Cochrane,VIP database,China Biology Medicine disc and CNKI database,and then the quality of the literatures was analyzed.Meta analysis was carried out using the RevMan software ( version 5.0.18 ).A random effects model was adopted,and the results of the meta analysis were presented with odds ratio (OR) and 95％ confidence interval (95％ CI).Results Four randomized controlled trials including 557 patients were retrieved.External stents were used in 160 patients and internal stents in 115 patients.The results of meta analysis showed no significant difference in the rate of fistula,overall postoperative morbidity and mortality between patients who did or did not receive pancreatic stents placement (OR =0.66,0.70,0.63,P ＞ 0.05 ).There were significant differences in the rate of pancreatic fistula and overall postoperative morbidity between patients who received external pancreatic stents placement and those did not receive pancreatic stents placement ( OR =0.48,0.55,P ＜ 0.05 ).There was no significant difference in the mortality rate between patients who received external pancreatic stents placement and those did not receive pancreatic stents placement (OR =0.71,P ＞ 0.05 ).There were no significant difference in the incidence of pancreatic fistula,overall postoperative morbility and mortality between patients who received internal pancreatic stents placement and those did not receive pancreatic stents placement ( x2 =0,0.75,2.11,P ＞ 0.05 ).Conclusions External pancreatic stents placement after pancreaticoduodenectomy can reduce the incidence of postoperative complications.The effects of internal pancreatic stents placement need to be proved by further highquality prospective randomized trials.