Background Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) should be updated when new evidence suggests the need for modification of clinically important recommendations. Some guideline handbooks suggest that CPGs should update every 2 to 5 years. Little is known about the updating of CPGs in China.

Objectives To investigate the current situation of the updating of CPGs in China.

Methods We searched WangFang, VIP, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM) up to December 2012. And then we screened all included papers.

Results A total of 380 Chinese CPGs were included. There were 345 of guidelines (91%) had not been updated. 35 (9%) were updated and the average update cycle of them was 5.6 years(from 1 to 9 years). No guideline described the details of methods of uptodate .

Conclusions Updating the CPGs is important for the better dissemination and utilisation. But in China, most of the CPGs had never been updated, and the average update cycle (5.6 years) of the updated is longer than international standard (5 years). We suggest Chinese guideline developers should pay more attention to the updating the guideline in time.