Objective The purpose of this study was to clarify the value of intestinal fatty acid-binding protein (I-FABP) for the early diagnosis of strangulated intestinal obstruction through a meta-analysis. Methods A search was performed on PubMed, EBSCO, the Cochrane Library, the Web of Science, EMBASE, CNKI, and WanFang for studies on the diagnosis of strangulated intestinal obstruction based on I-FABP. Endnote X9 software and the quality assessment of diagnostic accuracy studies 2 (QUADAS-2) were used to screen the studies and evaluate their quality, respectively. Meta-Disc 1.4 and Stata 15.1 software were used to perform the assessment of heterogeneity and meta-analysis. Result A total of eight studies were included, Spearman correlation coefficient was 0.703 (P = 0.078), suggesting that there was no threshold effect. The pooled results of the meta-analysis were as follows: sensitivity: 0.75 (95% CI: 0.66–0.81), specificity: 0.83 (95% CI: 0.71–0.91), positive likelihood ratio (PLR): 4.35 (95% CI: 2.57–7.36), negative likelihood ratio (NLR): 0.31 (95% CI: 0.24–0.39), and diagnostic odds ratio (DOR): 14.19 (95% CI: 8.08–24.92). The area under the curve was 0.83. There was obvious heterogeneity among the studies. Conclusion I-FABP is very valuable for the early diagnosis of strangulated intestinal obstruction and can be used to distinguish strangulated intestinal obstruction from intestinal obstruction in a timely manner, enabling accurate planning of the timing of surgery.