Abstract:Objective: To investigate the clinical characteristics of bronchobiliary fistula (BBF) in Chinese patients. Methods: Chinese Literature concerning BBF published from 1989 to 2013 was searched, and the clinical data of the patients were extracted and analyzed aggregately. Results: Fifty-one papers were finally selected with a total of 213 BBF patients. In these BBF patients, the male to female sex ratio was about 1.22:1, average age was (50.4±11.1) years old, and 70.1% of cases had previous history of surgery. The common clinical symptoms of BBF included biliptysis (96.5%), cough (94.5%), fever (83.8%), abdominal pain (79.3%), chest tightness/pain (76.2%), jaundice (59.2%), and dyspnea (13.5%).The primary causes comprised of bile duct stones (41.8%),hepatic hydatid (31.0%), biliary ascariasis (5.6%),primary or metastatic liver tumors (5.2%), trauma (4.7%), liver abscess (4.2%), congenital diseases (2.3%), multiple etiological factors (1.9%) or other single etiological factor (1.9%), and gallbladder stones with gallbladder wall perforation (1.4%). Of the patients, 90.6% received surgical treatment, and the overall cure rate was 89.5%, improvement rate was 3.3% and mortality rate was 6.2%. Conclusion: BBF is a relatively rare condition with multiple primary causes; rapid diagnosis can be made by bilioptysis and ERCP; patients receiving timely surgical treatment may obtain a satisfactory result.