ObjectiveTo systematically review the short term and long term efficacy of early surgery for infective endocarditis (IE) patients. MethodsWe searched PubMed, EMbase, The Cochrane Library, CBM, WanFang Data and CNKI databases for cohort studies concerning the efficacy of early surgery for IE patients from inception to October 2014. Two reviewers independently screened literature, extracted data and assessed the risk bias of included studies. Then meta-analysis was performed by using RevMan 5.3 software. ResultsSixteen cohort studies including 8 141 patients were included. The results of meta-analysis showed that early surgery could reduce the short term mortality (OR=0.57, 95%CI 0.42 to 0.77, P=0.000 4) and long term mortality (OR=0.57, 95%CI 0.43 to 0.77, P=0.000 7) in IE patients. Subgroup analysis showed that early surgery could significantly reduce the short term mortality and long term mortality in patients with native valve endocarditis (NVE). ConclusionEarly surgery can reduce IE patients' short term mortality and long term mortality. Due to the limited quality and quantity of the included studies, more large-scale high-quality studies are needed to verify the above conclusion.