ObjectiveTo systematically review the prognostic value of circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in non-metastatic breast cancer patients. MethodsWe electronically searched PubMed, EMbase, WanFang Data, CNKI and CBM for collecting cohort studies about the prognostic relevance of CTCs in the peripheral blood of stage I to Ⅲ breast cancer patients from inception to March 20th, 2014. Two reviewers independently screened studies according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, extracted data and assessed methodological quality. Meta-analysis was conducted using RevMan 5.2 software. ResultsA total of 7 studies involving 1 780 patients were eligible for final analyses. The results of meta-analysis showed that, the presence of CTCs was associated with both poor DFS (RR=2.24, 95%CI 1.92 to 2.61, P < 0.000 01) and OS (RR=2.55, 95%CI 1.99 to 3.28, P < 0.000 01). The results of subgroup analysis by detection time of CTCs showed that CTCs detected before and after adjuvant chemotherapy was a statistically significant prognostic factor (P≤0.000 4). ConclusionCTCs is an adverse prognostic factor in non-metastatic breast cancer patients, which is not significantly influenced by adjuvant chemotherapy.