OBJECTIVES: To systematically review and evaluate the quality of the published pharmacoeconomic researches on traditional Chinese medicine （TCM）to describe the current research status, progress and problem of TCM pharmacoeconomic studies.

METHODS: We developed a literature retrieval strategy，established eligibility criteria for study selection, and searched research literatures of pharmacoeconomic studies on TCM in Chinese database(CNKI, VIP, Wanfang and Sinomed) and English database(Pubmed、SCI、Embase) from inception to 1^st January 2018. Two reviewers independently screened the literatures and extracted the key information of the studies， then evaluated the quality of each study in the light of BMJ guideline and scored according to the number of matches.

RESULTS: 363 published pharmacoeconomic articles on TCM in Chinese and 5 articles in English were included. Studies on nervous system，cardiovascular，gynecological and respiratory diseases made up over 60%. The studies involved 227 Chinese patent medicines and 74 Chinese medicinal formulae. More than 84% of studies used cost-effectiveness analysis. Other information such as cost estimate, outcome indicators and uncertainty analysis were also statistically analyzed. Finally, overall score of the literature quality was 0.54 in terms of BMJ guideline. Among the 35 criteria items, the score of items like discount rate choice，statement of the method of valuing health states and quantities of resources reported separately from their unit costs was 0.

CONCLUSIONS: Low overall quality, unclear research perspective, lack of research design basis, cost calculation limitations or errors, poor comparability of outcome indicators were the common problems existing in the studies. And the papers in English didn’t showed higher quality. In addition, most studies use western medicine indicators rather than specific TCM indicators. We recommend the development of pharmacoeconomic guidelines for TCM to standardize the research path and improve the quality of research. Reasonable indicators of TCM outcome should be established to enhance clinical comparability.