OBJECTIVES: The inclusion of indirect costs of illness in pharmacoeconomics studies is still a subject of considerable debate. The aim of the systematic literature review was to present the Polish economic practice concerning indirect costs evaluation of healthcare interventions. Study was conducted as a first stage of a research project aimed at developing recommendation for methods of calculating indirect cost in Poland. METHODS: MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Library and Polish Medical Bibliography (PBL) were searched. Cut-off dates were set to February and March 2009. The main specific keywords were ‘indirect costs’ or ‘costs and cost analysis’. Extracted data covered; type of study, disease under study, methods for evaluating indirect cost, measures of productivity loss value and share in total costs. RESULTS: Nineteen studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria for this review, of a total of 2300 references. Seventeen out of 19 studies were cost of illness studies, 2 were economic analyses. Methods of evaluating indirect costs were all based on human capital approach. The work absenteeism unit time measure used to value productivity loss were average salary (9/19), Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita (7/19), Gross National Product per capita (1/19), GDP per active worker (1/19), sold production of industry per active worker (1/19). Mean indirect costs amounted to 58% of total costs, with a range of 16%-98%. In 5 studies transfer payments (e.g. sick leave) were added to productivity loss category. CONCLUSIONS: Indirect cost is rarely included in the economic analyses in Poland. Different methods calculating indirect cost limit comparison between studies and call for  development of robust and widely accepted methodology.