Background: One of the important goals of The Cochrane Collaboration is to involve consumers in the systematic reviews process so as to make the research more relevant. However, after 10 years, there seem to still exist some difficulties for Cochrane review groups to get consumers involved. Objectives: To determine the current status of consumer involvement in review groups and to identify why there is a problem in the level of participation. Methods: We systematically reviewed the monitoring forms and reports documents submitted by 51 Cochrane review groups in 2007 and focused on the consumers item, namely: ‘‘Do you have consumer input into all your published protocols and reviews?‘‘ Then, the responses were checked in detail and classified with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and response with explanations. Results: Among 51 review groups, 23 groups responded ‘yes’, 27 groups responded ‘no’, and one group did not respond. Among the 23 responses of ‘yes’, 18 groups provided positive responses in details including strategies to encourage authors to have consumer input once the title was registered; assisting authors when they found difficulties; listing the potential consumers and trying to match their areas of interest to the topics; identifying consumer coordinators or involving consumer as co-authors; providing training for consumers and establishing links with CCNet etc. Among the 27 responses of ‘no’, 18 groups provided the responses in details of which 14 groups expressed that they would plan to have consumer input in the next years. The most frequently mentioned difficulties were: ‘‘relevance of Cochrane topics/protocols/ reviews to consumers’’; ‘‘lack of personal interest for consumer’’; ‘‘timescale for review groups’’; ‘‘need funding to identify coordinating consumer’’; ‘‘no resources to identify consumers to meet the needs of authors’’; etc. Conclusions: Consumers can help review groups by selecting topics, providing comments, and helping to write the plain language summary. The difficulties/gaps listed above show that the review groups should target their protocols and reviews for target consumers and actively contact CCNet to help identify the target consumers. Next, for some review groups, they should include consumers as co-authors so that ideas can be better shared.