Fatty liver disease can be classified into alcoholic fatty liver disease and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease based on etiology,and it has become the most important liver disease worldwide.Due to the differences in the etiology and pathological mechanism of fatty liver disease,it may manifest as different traditional Chinese medicine syndromes during different pathological stages.The syndrome is based on the pathogenesis in a certain stage and is the basis for syndrome differentiation in traditional Chinese medicine.At present,there is still a lack of unified studies on the syndrome of fatty liver disease,and different methods for syndrome differentiation have obtained different syndrome types,which affects the syndrome differentiation-based treatment in clinical practice.This article briefly introduces the clinical studies on the syndrome types of fatty liver disease conducted by doctors of all dynasties and modern doctors and further emphasizes the significance of standard and accurate determination of the traditional Chinese medicine syndrome types of fatty liver disease in syndrome differentiation-based treatment.