ObjectiveTo evaluate the clinical efficacy of shenfu injection in reducing the side effects of chemotherapy in patients with cancer. MethodsWe searched Medline, PubMed, EMbase, VIP, Chinese science and technology periodical database full text database, China journal full database, Chinese biomedical literature database, and WANFANG database the durationi was from January 1994 to May 2013 for controlled trials about the use of shenfu injection to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy, without any language limitations. The quality of literature was evaluated by Jadad rating scale, and the included trials were analyze for systematic review. ResultsA total of 30 articles were included, and all of them were from Chinese literature. There were altogether 2039 cases. Compared with single chemotherapy group, the normal rate of white blood cells [RR=1.54, 95%CI (1.28, 1.84), P<0.0000 1], hemoglobin [RR=1.30, 95%CI (1.14, 1.48), P<0.000 1], platelet [RR=1.39, 95%CI (1.19, 1.62), P<0.000 1], and the number of patients without vomiting or sickness [RR=1.54, 95%CI (1.30, 1.81), P<0.0000 1] in the shenfu treatment group were all significantly higher. The life quality of the shenfu treatment group was also obviously better than the single chemotherapy group. ConclusionCompared with single chemotherapy, shenfu injection can reduce the peripheral blood cell reduction, gastrointestinal reaction and improve the patients' quality of life. Because the quality of included studies in this research is generally low, it is necessary to design a more reasonable and strict experiment with a large sample to get an exact conclusion.