Objective: Vascular bypass graft is an important method to reconstruct vascular function when tissue ischemia caused by arterial stenosis or occlusion. While sometime the auto-vessels are unavailable and insufficient, artificial vessels are needed as graft. This paper aims to review the main principles of tissue engineered blood vessels, current status and present problems in the study of seed cells, stent and reconstruction of blood vessels in vitro. Data sources: The relevant articles to artificial vessels and tissue engineering materials were searched for by using computer in the Medline database with the key words of "endothelium cell, tissue engineering, cell source, small-diameter vascular graft, biomedical engineering, blood vessel, etc.". The English articles were chosen. Study selection: After the primary check-up to the above relevant literatures, the articles about the experiments using nonrandomized controlled method were screened out. The full texts of the rest articles were looked up. Inclusion criteria were for those randomized controlled experiments. Excluded criteria were for those nonrandomized controlled, repeated or review studies. Data extraction: Totally 33 articles about tissue engineered blood vessels were collected and 22 pieces of them were in accordance with the inclusion criteria. The excluded 11 articles included 7 repeated study and 4 reviews. Data synthesis: The content of selected 22 articles were about endothelial cells, natural and synthetic materials, cell transplantation, and so on. The tissue engineered blood vessels reconstructed with extracellular matrix or artificial synthetic materials as stents to synthesize and implant seed cells were studied in strength, patency and biocompatibility. Conclusion: To find a man-made vessel comparable to the natural blood vessel in mechanics and biology always is a hot research point in blood vessel tissue engineering. The tissue engineered blood vessel can remodel and transform to a part of human body while the adjacent tissues grow into the stents and stents degrade into pieces. It still needs further and detailed study on the sources of seed cells, the construction of stent and three-dimensional culture of vessels.