Background. The concept of multistage surgical treatment of patients has been established in surgery rather recently and therefore the discussions on the expediency of using a particular surgical technique in a specific situation still continue. Vacuum-assisted laparostomy is being widely implemented into clinical practice for the treatment of abdominal compartment syndrome, severe peritonitis and abdominal trauma, but the indications and advantages of this method are not clearly defined yet.The aim of the study. To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis on the comparison of the effectiveness of vacuum-assisted laparostomy with various variants of relaparotomy and laparostomy without negative pressure therapy in the treatment of patients with urgent abdominal pathology and abdominal trauma complicated by widespread peritonitis, sepsis or compartment syndrome.Material and methods. A systematic literature search was conducted in accordance with the recommendations of “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses”. We carried out the analysis of non-randomized (since January 2007 until August 6, 2022) and randomized (without time limits for the start of the study and until August 6, 2022) studies from the electronic databases eLibrary, PubMed, Cochrane Library, Science Direct, Google Scholar Search, Mendeley.Results. Vacuum-assisted laparostomy causes statistically significant shortening of the time of treatment of patients in the ICU and in hospital and a decrease in postoperative mortality compared to other variants of laparostomy without vacuum assistance.Conclusion. To obtain data of a higher level of evidence and higher grade of recommendations, it is necessary to further conduct systematic reviews and meta-analyses based on randomized clinical studies.