Objective To analyze the impact of diagnostic staging laparoscopy in gallbladder carcinoma and hilar cholangiocarcinoma.Methods The Medline,Embase,Web of Science,Cochrane library and Google Scholar were searched for literature on staging laparoscopy (SL) in gallbladder carcinoma and hilar cholangiocarcinoma.The sensitivity,specificity and diagnostic accuracy of SL were evaluated.Results Eight studies were included in the meta-analysis.During laparoscopy,unresectable disease was found in 316 of 1 062 patients (29.8％),of whom 32.4％ were patients with suspected hilar cholangiocarcinoma (HC) and 27.6％ were patients with suspected gall-bladder cancer (GBC).The sensitivities were 0.556 (95％ CI:0.495-0.616) for patients with HC and 0.642 (95％ CI:0.579-0.701) for patients with GBC.The pooled specificity for SL was 100％ (95％ CI:0.993-1.000) for all the studies.Conclusion For patients with gallbladder cancer or hilar cholangiocarcinoma,SL combined with intraoperative ultrasound improved the accuracy of diagnosis and avoided unnecessary laparotomy.