Abstract: A review on the content and speciation analysis of trace elements in clinical samples by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was presented. The study is mainly focused on the following subjects: sample preparation (simple dilution, wet digestion and microwave digestion were compared with each other); determination and speciation analysis of trace elements. Furthermore, the application of the hyphenated technique including high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), gas chromatography (GC), supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) and capillary electrophoresis(CE) are introduced, some problems in the application and the handing strategies are simply presented at the end.