BACKGROUND: Tissue-engineered trachea serving as a tracheal transplant, can not only reduce the expression of antigen cells, suppress immunoreaction, but also in advance conduct vascularization of blood vessels and regeneration culture of tissue cells in vitro. OBJECTIVE: To summarize the commonly used methods for tracheal transplantation, to introduce the latest clinical transplantation method of tissue-engineered trachea, and to provide reference evidence for carrying out such operations. METHODS: Taking tissue engineering, trachea, transplantation in English as search terms, Pubrned database from January 1990 to May 2009, ScienceDirect database from January 1990 to May 2009, Springer database from January 1990 to May 2009 was retrieved; Taking tissue engineering, trachea, transplantation in Chinese as search terms, CNKI database from January 1990 to May 2009 was researched. Literatures were limited to English and Chinese languages. Inclusive criteria: clinical studies and animal experiments related to the tracheal transplantation; exclusive criteria: duplicate documents. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Totally 270 literatures were screened out by computer, accordingto inclusion and exclusion criteria, 32 documents of which were involved for analysis. There is an increasing cases with irreversible injury of tracheal resulted from various reasons and in need of transplantation during clinical work, and the material source of tracheal transplantation is always the main problem to limited the clinical use. Constructing tissue-engineered trachea in vitro is considered to be a good way for repairing trachea. This paper will review the origin and development of tracheal transplantation and tissue-engineered trachea, summarize the common method of allotransplantation, autotransplantation and biomaterial transplantation, as well as the research of constructing bio-scaffold, choosing seed cells and clinical applied development of tissue-engineered trachea, and emphatically introduce the first case of successful artificial tracheal transplantation by combining the method of allotransplantation and culturing the seed cell without the immune cells of donor.