Search strategy

To obtain the relevant research, we comprehensively searched the Pubmed, Cochrane Library, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Database for Chinese Technical Periodicals (VIP), Wanfang (Wanfang data), and SinoMed database from inception until April 2019. The combined search used the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms and non-MeSH terms, such as “prostatic hyperplasia”, “BPH”, “transurethral prostate division”, “TUSP”, and “randomized controlled trial”. All articles were viewed and read independently by two authors (YYH and JXL), and any objections were submitted to another investigator (SSW) who was not involved in the initial process. References were also manually searched for additional studies in the relevant original and commentary articles.

The inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) randomized control design; (2) full-text content and related data can be obtained; (3) the study provides accurate data that can be analyzed, including the total number of subjects and the valuable results of each indicator. In addition, the exclusion criteria were as follows: (1) duplicate studies, case reports, conference abstracts, animal experiments, editorial opinions; (2) insufficient data for research, such as a lack of means and standard deviations; (3) case-control study or cohort study; and (4) lack of parallel control.