ObjectiveTo systematically review the long-term efficacy of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) versus drug-eluting stent implantation (DES-PCI) for patients with multivessel coronary artery disease. MethodsWe searched The Cochrane Library (Issue 2, 2015), PubMed, EMbase, CBM, CNKI, WanFang Data and VIP to collect randomized controlled trials (RCTs) about CABG versus DES-PCI for patients with coronary multivessel disease from the inception to October 2015. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies, then meta-analysis was performed by using RevMan 5.2 software. ResultsA total of seven RCTs, involving 5 723 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that: compared with the DES-PCI group, the CABG group had lower 1-year incidence of target vessel revascularization (OR=0.39, 95%CI 0.31 to 0.48, P<0.000 01), 5-year mortality (OR=0.78, 95%CI 0.65 to 0.94, P=0.008), and 5-year incidence of myocardial infarction (OR=0.46, 95%CI 0.37 to 0.58, P<0.000 01). However, 1-year, 2-year and 5-year incidences of stroke in the CABG group were significantly higher than that in the DES-PCI group (all P values <0.05). ConclusionThe available evidence suggests that CABG is superior to DES-PCI for patients with multivessel coronary artery disease in long-term effects, but CABG could increase the incidence of stroke. Due to the quantity and quality of the included studies, the above conclusions still need to be verified by more high-quality RCTs.