ObjectivesTo systematically review the safety and effectiveness of uterine artery embolization (UAE), surgery and high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) in the treatment of uterine fibroids.MethodsPubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, WanFang Data and CNKI databases were electronically searched to collect relevant studies on comparing the safety and effectiveness of UAE, surgery and HIFU in the treatment of uterine fibroids from January 2000 to August 2019. Two reviewers independently screened the literature, extracted the data and evaluated the risk of bias of included studies, network meta-analysis was performed by ADDIS 1.16.8 software and Stata 14.0 software.ResultsA total of 11 trials (22 references) involving 3469 patients were included. Compared with surgery, UAE and HIFU patients had higher quality of life (1-year follow-up) improvement, and UAE was higher than HIFU. Network meta-analysis showed that patients treated with HIFU had the lowest incidence of major complications within 1 year, followed by UAE, and surgery. Patients treated with HIFU and UAE had shorter hospitalization and quicker recovery time than surgery. The rate of further intervention after surgery treatment might be lower than that of UAE and HIFU.ConclusionsUAE has the highest quality of life improvement (1-year follow-up) for uterine fibroids. HIFU and UAE are safer with shorter hospital stays and quicker recovery time compared with surgery. However, both UAE and HIFU have the risk of re-treatment. However, limited by the number and quality of included studies, the above conclusions are needed to be verified by more high-quality studies.
