Our results show that in terms of 30-day surgical site infections, 30-day mortality, and hernia recurrence within one year, the evidence for the use of mesh hernia repair compared with non-mesh hernia repair in emergency groin hernia surgery is very uncertain. Unfortunately, firm conclusions cannot be drawn due to very low-certainty evidence and meta-analyses based on small-sized and low-quality studies. There is a need for future high-quality RCTs or high-quality registry-based studies if RCTs are unfeasible.