Abstract: Objective: To explore the surgical management strategy of asymptomatic Meckel diverticulum (MD) in children. Methods: The
databases of MD in children were collected from PubMed, Cochrane, CNKI and wanfang prior to March 1, 2020. The data of the
number of surgical cases, postoperative complications and the presence of gastric mucosal heterotopia were extracted through reading
and selecting articles and compared between asymptomatic and symptomatic groups with statistics. Results: There were 1 585
childhood MD cases in 24 articles included in this study collected from total 14 398 literatures in Chinese and English, among which
350 children were with asymptomatic MD. The proportion of MD resection, postoperative complications and gastric mucosal ectopia
in children were significantly lower in asymptomatic MD group than that in symptomatic MD group (P< 0.05). Conclusion: The data
suggested that it is unnecessary to resect asymptomatic MD in children preventively, but whether to resect it or not should be decided
according to the situation when MD is found in children during other abdominal operations.

Key words: Meckel diverticulum, asymptomatic, surgical management strategy, children