SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Neonatology
Efficacy and safety of phototherapy for jaundice in full-term newborns: a meta-analysis
Provisionally accepted
- Dongguan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Dongguan, China
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Objective The efficacy and safety of phototherapy in the treatment of full-term neonatal jaundice were meta-analyzed and the advantages of phototherapy were summarized. Methods PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library and Web of Science databases were searched using subject + free words for the subject words "phototherapy", "jaundice" and "full-term newborn", and the search time was limited from January 1, 2000 to April 25, 2024, and the search language was unlimited. According to the inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria, two researchers independently conducted three-level screening of the retrieved literature to obtain the included literature. Collected and compared information included in the literature. Review Manager 5.3 was used to plot bias plots, forest plots, and funnel plots. Statistical analyses were performed using IBM SPSS Statistics 26 and Stata 17 software. Results We obtained a total of 486 literature entries, and 17 were included in the systematic review. The meta-analysis included 647 full-term neonates from 14 studies with complete serum total bilirubin (STB) data before and after phototherapy. The pooled mean reduction in STB was 5.43 mg/dL (95% CI: 5.30-5.56). Chi²=728.01, df=13 (p < 0.00001), I²=98%, Z=80.54 (p < 0.00001) of serum total bilirubin (mg/dL) before and after phototherapy. The STB reduction rate in all studies was greater than 18%. Conclusion Proper phototherapy can significantly reduce the level of serum total bilirubin and eliminate the symptoms of jaundice in full-term neonates. Light-emitting diode (LED) phototherapy devices demonstrated higher efficacy compared to fluorescent tube systems. The treatment is safe with minimal adverse effects.
Keywords: Phototherapy, Jaundice, Full-term neonates, Therapeutic effect, Meta-analysis
Received: 09 Sep 2025; Accepted: 24 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Feng, Liang, Ye and Xie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Shubin Xie, sbinxie@163.com
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