ObjectivesTo systematically evaluate the efficacy and safety of dabigatran vs. rivaroxaban for perioperative anticoagulation in the ablation of nonvalvular atrial fibrillation. MethodsPubMed, EMbase, Web of Science, The Cochrane Library, WanFang Data, CNKI and VIP databases were electronically searched to collect cohort studies on the efficacy and safety of dabigatran vs. rivaroxaban for perioperative anticoagulation in the ablation of nonvalvular atrial fibrillation from inception to July 1st, 2018. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk of bias of included studies, then, meta-analysis was performed by RevMan 5.3 and Stata 12.0 software. ResultsA total of 12 cohort studies involving 4 051 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that: there were no differences in the rate of thromboembolic (OR=0.92, 95%CI 0.36 to 2.35, P=0.86), ischemic stroke (OR=1.15, 95%CI 0.22 to 6.07, P=0.87), major bleeding (OR=0.84, 95%CI 0.43 to 1.66, P=0.61), minor bleeding (OR=0.90, 95%CI 0.60 to 1.34, P=0.60) and pericardial tamponade (OR=1.05, 95%CI 0.45 to 2.47, P=0.90) between dabigatran and rivaroxaban groups. ConclusionsCurrent evidence shows that the efficacy and safety of dabigatran vs. rivaroxaban for perioperative anticoagulation in the ablation of nonvalvular atrial fibrillation are similar. Due to limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more high quality studies are required to verify the above conclusion.