The association between atrial fibrillation (AF) after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and the surgical techniques selected has been extensively reported.However,no consistent results were obtained.In the present study,a meta-analysis was conducted by searching the electronic databases PubMed,Embase,Web of Science,and Cochrane to identify the association of post-CABG AF with on-pump (conventional CABG,cCABG) or off-pump CABG (OPCABG).Outcomes from randomized clinical trials (RCTs) and propensity score matching (PSM) trials were pooled by using the fixed-effect or the random-effect modeling method,and verified by the quality-effect modeling method.There were 35 studies with 36 independent reports that met the inclusion criteria and were eventually included in our meta-analysis.The total odds ratio (OR) of the incidence of post-CABG AF between OPCABG and cCABG was 0.80 (95％ CI 0.71-0.91).The 25 randomized clinical trials (RCTs) had an OR of 0.69 (95％ CI 0.56-0.86),while the OR of the 11 PSM trials was 0.88 (95％ CI 0.77-1.00).Twenty-six studies involving the patients at a mean age no more than 65 years showed an OR of 0.76 (95％ CI 0.64-0.90),whereas 10 studies with patients greater than 65 years old showed an OR of 0.90 (95％ CI 0.78-1.05).The results of this meta-analysis suggest that OPCAB surgery may reduce the incidence of post-CABG AF when compared to cCABG and that younger patients may benefit more from OPCAB and have a lower incidence ofpost-CABG AF.