Cancer pain is one of the most common symptoms of patients with advanced cancer.Currently,the treatment is guided by WHO's “three-step” analgesia principle and combined with various “cancer pain practice guidelines” as the subject,but these schemes have many problems such as poor local pain control and adverse drug reactions etc.TCM has a long history of external treatment,a complete theoretical system,a variety of therapeutic methods and remarkable effects.Many scholars have carried out a lot of research and achieved good curative effects.The external treatment of traditional Chinese medicine treatment of pain in recent five years related literature were reviewed,and we summarized the etiology and pathogenesis of pain and pain in recent years,and the most commonly used Chinese medicine external treatment methods.We put forward the traditional Chinese medicine external treatment also exists some disadvantages and relevant perfect solution,providing reference for future research on the treatment of cancer pain with external Chinese medicine.