Abstract:To review the clinical efficacy of Endoscopic Mucosal Resection (EMR) vs Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection (ESD) for patients with colorectal cancer. Methods Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) about EMR vs ESD for colorectal cancer were searched in PubMed, the Cochrane Library, EMbase, CNKI, CBM and WanFang Databases from the date of their establishment to Dec 16th, 2018. Other relevant journals and references of included studies were also searched manually. Reviewers independently screened literatures according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, extracted data and assessed methodological quality of included studies. Meta-analysis was then conducted using RevMan 5.3 software. Results 18 RCTs involving 1 764 patients were enrolled. The results of meta-analysis indicated that: effectiveness, ESD groups had higher endoscopic complete resection rate (OR = 0.16, 95%CI: 0.09 ~ 0.27, P = 0.000), higher histological complete resection rate (OR = 0.32, 95%CI: 0.11 ~ 0.90, P = 0.030) and less recurrence rate than EMR groups (OR = 6.15, 95%CI: 3.42 ~ 11.06, P = 0.000); Safety, ESD groups had longer procedure time (MD = -25.53, 95%CI: -33.37 ~ -17.69, P = 0.000) as well as higher perforation rate than EMR groups (OR = 0.22, 95%CI: 0.10 ~ 0.47, P = 0.000). However, there seemed to be no statistical difference between ESD groups and EMR groups in the bleeding and infection rate (OR = 0.67, 95%CI: 0.43 ~ 1.05, P = 0.080; OR = 0.57, 95%CI: 0.22 ~ 1.49, P = 0.250, respectively). Conclusion Current evidence indicates that ESD is more effectiveness, but it needs longer procedure time and may cause higher perforation rate than EMR for colorectal cancer. Due to the limited quantity and quality of the included studies, more larger sample, multicenter and high quality RCTs are needed to verify the above conclusion.