Objective To evaluate the short-term therapeutic effect of entecavir in treatment of HBV-related liver failure.Methods Randomized controlled trails on treatment of HBV-related liver failure with entecavir were searched in Embase,PubMed,BIOSIS Previews,HMIC,CNKI,Wanfang data,cqvip and SinoMed from March 2005 to September 2012.Meta-analysis was performed by using RevMan 5.0 software.Fixed effects model or random effect model was used according to heterogeneity differences.To evaluate the effect of entecavir,risk ratio (RR) was applied to assess the improvement of mortality rate and HBV DNA negative conversion rate,and weighted men differences (WMD) was applied to assess the changes of alanine aminotransferase (ALT),total bilirubin (TBil),albumin (Alb) and plasma thromboplastin antecedent (PTA) levels.Funnel plots and fail-safe number were used for sensitivitypublication bias analysis.Results Totally 10 eligible literatures with 790 patients were included in this analysis.Compared with the controls,the mortality rate (RR =0.68,95％ CI =0.56 to 0.81,Z =4.21,P＜0.01),TBil (WMD=-133.97,95％CI=-185.15 to-82.78,Z=5.13,P＜0.01) and ALT (WMD =-99.81,95％ CI =-187.37 to-12.24,Z =2.23,P ＜ 0.01) levels were lower in entecavir group,while HBV DNA negative conversion rate (RR =5.21,95％ CI =3.66 to 7.42,Z =9.15,P ＜0.01),PTA(WMD=21.49,95％CI=19.32 to 23.67,Z=19.37,P＜0.01) and Alb (WMD=3.81,95％CI=1.24 to 6.37,Z=2.91,P＜0.01) were higher in the entecavir group.Conclusion Entecavir can significantly reduce mortality rate,ALT and TBil levels,improve PTA,Alb levels and increase HBV DNA negative conversion rate for patients with HBV-related liver failure.