With the widespread promotion and application of antiretroviral therapy in clinical practice, people living with HIV (PLWH) have the potential to live as long as non-HIV people and the probability of surgery for PLWH has been increasing dramatically. However, the overall postoperative outcome and risk are still unclear. We performed comprehensive and methodical searches in PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science without date and language restrictions. Study outcomes included: (1) cure rate, (2) mortality, (3) reoperation rate, (4) incidence of any postoperative complications, (5) length of stay, and (6) operation duration. NOS scores were employed to evaluate bias risk, while publication bias was assessed using funnel plots and Egger tests. Review Manager version 5.4.1, R version 4.4.1, and Stata version 14.0 were employed to determine quantitative analysis, considering a significance level of p <
0.05. A total of 50 studies were included, involving 54 565 PLWH undergoing surgical treatment. Synthesis analysis showed that the mortality (OR = 1.70, 95% CI: 1.58-1.83, p <
0.00001), reoperation rate (OR = 1.78, 95% CI: 1.36-2.34, p <
0.00001), complication rate (OR = 1.56, 95% CI: 1.26-1.95, p <
0.00001), LOS (OR = 1.63, 95% CI: 1.28-1.99, p <
0.00001), and operation time (OR = 7.37, 95% CI: 1.14-13.59, p = 0.02) were increased in PLWH. However, there was no significant difference in the cure rate compared to the control group (OR = 1.27, 95% CI: 0.90-1.79, p = 0.18). Subgroup analysis showed that complication rates increased again in orthopedic (OR = 1.65, 95% CI: 1.34-2.05, p <
0.00001) and general surgery (OR = 1.72, 95% CI: 1.08-2.74, p = 0.02). However, the type of procedure, publication quality, study type, and patient origin were not sources of complication rate heterogeneity. Meta-regression showed that CD4 count had no effect on complication rate, but the anti-retroviral therapy rate had 34.89% explanatory power. There is an increased risk of postoperative death, reoperation, complications, and prolonged hospital stay and surgical duration in PLWH. However, conducting extensive prospective studies across multiple centers is crucial to validate these findings.