Shang L, Gu X, Du S, et al. - Whether therapeutic lung lavage (segmental bronchoalveolar lavage and whole lung lavage) has efficacy and safety in the treatment of exogenous lipoid pneumonia (ELP), was investigated herein. The relevant studies were identified from PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, CNKI, Wanfang Database, clinicaltrials.gov, and the references. Experts analyzed 90 ELP patients, of those, 84 (93.3%) received segmental bronchoalveolar lavage and six (6.7%) received whole lung lavage. Following lavages, clinical improvement was seen in 87 (96.7%) patients, while three (3.3%) patients did not experience improvement and eventually died. Current studies were all case reports and case series with relatively high risk of bias. In 29 patients, follow‐up was recorded, of those, 24 remained well without any use of drugs and 4 continued to be well with some periods of corticosteroids. Overall, findings show the likely effectiveness as well as safety of therapeutic lung lavage as a treatment choice with long‐term benefits for ELP.