As an interdisciplinary field integrating narrative medicine and visual culture, graphic medicine offers a distinctive paradigm for expanding the practical pathways of medical humanities. By systematically reviewing graphic medicine research published between 2010 and 2025, this study identifies four core thematic dimensions: the affordances of the comic media, applications in medical humanities education, functions in health communication, and ethical critique and institutional reflection. The theoretical frameworks primarily draw from visual semiotics theory and social semiotics theory, conceptual metaphor theory, and a transdisciplinary fusion of philosophy, anthropology and sociology. However, the field also faces several challenges, including a narrow concentration of research objects and cultural perspectives, a relative lack of empirical studies and quantitative evaluation, and insufficient integration among academic research, comics creation, and medical practice. Future research should develop culturally sensitive multimodal analytical frameworks, extend inquiry into issues concerning marginalized social groups, health justice, and cross-cultural narrative differences, and promote methodological integration alongside an evidence-based turn, thereby offering insights for the advancement of medical humanities practice in China.