الفهرس 
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Abstract
Background: Undescended testis is the most common endocrinological disease in the male newborn period. Incidence varies between 1.0% and 4.6% in full-term neonates, with rates as high as 45% in preterm neonates. Cryptorchidism carries a future risk of deterred semen quality and an increased incidence of testicular germ cell tumors. The risk of testicular germ cell tumors is increased by a 2–5 fold in comparison to the general population. Thus, the importance of cryptorchidism treatment concerns the possibility of diminishing risk of malignant degeneration and improving fertility. Treatment options include watchful waiting, surgery and hormonal treatment. Documented success rates of hormonal therapy vary from 0 - 55%with human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and 9–78% with leutinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH). The use of hormonal treatment is still controversial and is met with different enthusiasm amongst practitioners.
Objective: The aim of this study is to evaluate the degree of descent of undescended testes towards the scrotum in response to hormonal therapy namely human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH), also known as luteinizing hormone releasing hormone (LHRH) in the pediatric age group according to literature published in the period from 2000 - 2020.
Methods: A search was conducted using the following online databases; PubMed, Egyptian Knowledge Bank including Science Direct, Scopus and Web of Science in the time frame from 2000 – 2020 with the following search terms: “cryptorchidism“ AND “descent” AND (”GnRH”OR”HCG”OR”LHRH”OR”Hormone”) and a systematic review and meta-analysis was formulated using RevMan and STATA software’s.
Results: Three studies compared hormonal treatment to placebo with a total of 1,444 patients and 2,029 UDT. Effect estimate favored hormonal therapy, whether hCG or LHRH, over placebo in term of descent of the testes towards the scrotum, with an overall risk ratio of 2.60 in the fixed effect model and 95% CI: [2.07 – 3.26] and an overall risk ratio of 2.30 in the random effect model with 95% CI: [1.13 – 4.69]. The remaining eight studies tested hormonal therapy alone with no control groups with a total of 731 patients that were treated with hCG alone or LHRH alone or a combination of both. The overall effect of hormonal therapy, whether hCG alone, LHRH alone or a combination of both with no control group was 39.1% according to the pooled studies and the 95% CI: [35.3 – 42.9] in term of improvement of descent of the testes towards the scrotum, whether partial or complete descent.
Conclusion: With the analyzed information in this review and previous studies done until the present, the evidence for use of hCG and LHRH shows a substantial success rate and is more effective than placebo. Side effects however are present and should be considered when choosing to prescribe hormonal treatment.