Retention enema with traditional Chinese medicine for hepatic encephalopathy A protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is one of the common complications of many serious liver diseases. Western medicine treatment is mainly symptomatic treatment such as neutralizing blood ammonia and protecting liver, which has poor curative effect, easy repetition and high mortality. Retention enema with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been used on treatment of HE in China for many years. And it has been clinically proved that retention enema with TCM is effective and safe. But there is absent convincing evidence-based medicine to confirm the efficacy of retention enema with TCM for HE. Thus, we aimed to conduct this meta-analysis to summarize the efficacy of retention enema with TCM in patients with HE. Methods: The study only selects clinical randomized controlled trials of retention enema with TCM for HE. We will search each database from the built-in until December 31, 2020. The English literature mainly searches Cochrane Library, Pubmed, EMBASE, and Web of Science. While the Chinese literature comes from CNKI, CBM, VIP, and Wanfang database. Meanwhile, we will retrieve clinical trial registries and gray literature. Two researchers worked independently on literature selection, data extraction and quality assessment. The dichotomous data is represented by relative risk (RR), and the continuous is expressed by mean difference (MD) or standard mean difference (SMD), eventually the data is synthesized using a fixed effect model (FEM) or a random effect model (REM) depending on the heterogeneity. The total effective rate, blood ammonia and the total bilirubin were evaluated as the main outcomes. While several secondary outcomes were also evaluated in this study. The statistical analysis of this Meta-analysis was conducted by RevMan software version 5.3. Results: This study will synthesize and provide high-quality evidence based on the data of the currently published retention enema with TCM for the treatment of HE. Conclusion: This meta-analysis aims to evaluate the benefits of retention enema with TCM for the treatment of HE reported in randomized controlled trials, and provide more options for clinicians and patients with HE. Registration number: INPLASY202080107.