Objective To compare the incidence of postoperative ileus following laparoscopic and open radical resection for colorectal cancer using meta-analysis.Methods The Cochrane library,Pubmed,Ovid databases were searched as of October 2011.Two reviewers extracted the data and assessed the methodological quality independently.The homogeneity of studies was evaluated and the meta-analysis was conducted by the Cochrane Collaboration RevMan 5.0 software.Results Seven studies including 3630 cases were analyzed.A total of 1814 patients received laparoscopic surgery,of whom 58 developed postoperative ileus.There were 1816 cases undergoing open surgery,of whom 105 developed early postoperative ileus.The pooled relative risk was 0.55 with a 95％ confidence interval of 0.41-0.76.The difference was statistically significant (P＜0.01).Conclusion Compared with open surgery,laparoscopic colorectal resection can reduce the incidence of postoperative ileus.