Objective To evaluate the effectiveness and security through meta-analysis of a comprehensive study of efficacy of coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) versus drug-eluting stent percutaneous coronary intervention (DES-PCI), for diabetes mellitus with multi-vessel coronary disease. Methods Databases including The Cochrane Library, PubMed, MEDLINE, EMbase, CBM, CNKI, WanFang Data and VIP were searched from their establishment dates to 2010. Published information and conference papers including references were handsearched. Relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on diabetic patients with coronary multi-vessel disease treated with revascularization were collected and screened by two reviewers independently. After data extraction and quality assessment of the included studies, meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.0. Results A total of eight studies involving a total of 3 689 cases (CABG group: 1 814 cases; DES-PCI group: 1 875 cases) were included. Results of meta-analyses showed that: compared with the DES-PCI group, the CABG group could significantly reduce postoperative repeat revascularization rate (OR=0.27, 95% CI 0.10 to 0.69, P=0.006) and major cardio-cerebral vascular events (OR=0.49, 95% CI 0.38 to 0.62, Plt;0.000 01). But in reducing mortality rate (OR=0.84, 95%CI 0.64 to 1.10, P=0.21), cerebrovascular events (OR=2.00, 95%CI 0.97 to 4.14, P=0.06) and myocardial infarction incidence rate (OR=0.92, 95%CI 0.53 to 1.59, P=0.75), there were no significant differences between the two groups. Conclusion CABG is superior to DES-PCI in the treatment of diabetic patients with multi-vessel disease. However, due to the limitation of the quality and quantity of the included studies, the above conclusion should be tested by conducting more large-scale, multi-center and prospective RCTs in future.