Remote ischemic preconditioning (RIPC) is a novel preventative treatment approach that is proposed in recent years. It is a non‑invasive and clinically relevant preventative strategy of cardiac muscles, that is, to carry out acute transient ischemia in the distant limb before surgery, so as to possibly relieve ischemia/perfusion injury (I/RI) in distant organs (including the heart and brain, etc.). A large number of animal studies and human clinical trials have demonstrated that remote ischemic preconditioning can reduce myocardial infarction size to prevent reperfusion injury. Unfortunately, it is difficult to transform from experiments to clinical application and finally benefit patients. Therefore, the efficient and effective method has yet to be developed. In this review, now analyzed the studies concerning cardioprotective effects by RIPC and summarized the difficulties of clinical practice.