Abstract:[Objective] To compare the clinical outcomes of percutaneous endoscopic lumbar discectomy (PELD) under local anesthe- sia (LA) versus general anesthesia (GA) . [Methods] Literatures published before March 2022 regarding to clinical comparison of PELD un- der LA versus GA were searched from CNKI, Wanfang, VIP, EMBASE, PubMed, CBM and the Cochrane Library. A meta-analysis of out- come measures was performed using Stata/SE 12.0 software. [Results] A total of 9 studies were included into this study, involving 796 pa- tients, including 388 patients in the LA group and 408 patients in the GA group. As results of the meta-analysis, the LA group proved sig- nificantly superior to the GA group in terms of hospital stay (WMD=-1.39, 95%CI: -2.72~0.06, P<0.05) , hospitalization cost (WMD=-5 278.27, 95%CI: -7 668.84~-2 887.70, P<0.05) , and incidence of postoperative complications (RR=0.30, 95%CI: 0.11-0.85, P<0.05) . However, there were no significant differences between the two groups in terms of operation time, postoperative VAS score, and postopera- tive Oswestry disability index (P>0.05) . [Conclusion] The PELD under local anesthesia is significantly better than that under general an- esthesia in terms of hospital stay, treatment cost and incidence of postoperative complications, and the former has no obvious disadvantage in terms of safety.