ObjectiveTo systematically review efficacy of endoscopic ultrasonography guided biliary drainage (EUS-BD) and percutaneous transhepatic biliary drainage (PTBD) on patients with malignant obstructive jaundice.MethodsThe PubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, CBM, WanFang Data, and CNKI were searched online to collect the randomized controlled trials or cohort studies of EUS-BD versus PTBD on the patients with malignant obstructive jaundice from inception to November 30, 2018. Two reviewers independently screened the literatures, extracted the data and assessed the risk of bias of included the studies, then the meta-analysis was performed by using the RevMan 5.3 software.ResultsThree randomized controlled trials and 6 cohort studies involving 496 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that: compared with the PTBD, the EUS-BD had the lower occurrence of complications [OR=0.30, 95% CI (0.20, 0.47), P<0.000 01], lower rate of reintervention [OR=0.11, 95% CI (0.06, 0.22), P<0.000 01], shorter hospital stay [MD=–3.42, 95% CI (–6.72, –0.13), P=0.04], and less hospital costs [SMD=–0.83, 95% CI (–1.16, –0.49), P<0.000 01]. There were no significant differences in the technical success rate [OR=0.88, 95% CI (0.20, 3.85), P=0.86] and clinical effective rate [OR=1.73, 95% CI (0.97, 3.11), P=0.06] between the two groups.ConclusionsCurrent evidence shows that EUS-BD has some advantages of lower occurrence of complications, lower rate of reintervention, shorter hospital stay, and less hospital costs in treatment of patients with malignant obstructive jaundice as compared with PTBD. There are no significant differences between two groups in technical success rate and clinical effective rate. Due to limited quality and quantity of included studies, more high quality studies required to be verified above conclusions.