Chloral hydrate is a safe and effective sedative hypnotic medicine. Patients can usually calm down or fall asleep quickly after taking it. It has great clinical value and practical needs in children ’s sedation. However ，the nature of chloral hydrate itself and various factors such as ambient temperature and light affect its stability of the preparation ，most of chloral hydrate preparations are still used in clinic in the form of hospital preparations. Therefore ，developing chloral hydrate preparation with single dose ，long validity period and automatic mass production is the prospect and goal of its subsequent development. Based on it，this study collects and reviews the relevant literatures on various preparations of chloral hydrate and their clinical application by searching the Chinese and English databases.