ObjectivesTo systematically review the influence of single-stent versus double-stent strategy for coronary bifurcation lesions prognosis.MethodsPubMed, The Cochrane Library, EMbase, Web of Science, CBM, WanFang Data, VIP and CNKI databases were searched online to collect randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of single-stent versus double-stent strategy for coronary bifurcation lesions from inception to March, 2017. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies, then, meta-analysis was performed by using Stata 12.0 software.ResultsA total of 23 RCTs involving 7 391 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that: compared to the double-stent strategy, the single-stent strategy significantly reduced the myocardial infarction rate (RR=0.61, 95%CI 0.50 to 0.73, P<0.001). There were no significant differences between two groups in all cause mortality, cardiac mortality, main adverse coronary event (MACE), target lesion revascularization (TLR) and stent thrombosis. The results of subgroup analysis showed that: single-stent strategy for coronary bifurcation lesions was associated with lower all-cause mortality at five-years follow-up (RR=0.59, 95%CI 0.40 to 0.88,P=0.01).ConclusionsCurrent evidence shows that single-stent strategy for coronary bifurcation lesions could reduce the myocardial infarction rate and five-year mortality compared to double-stent strategy. Due to limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high quality studies are needed to verify above conclusion.