Objective To systematically review the impact of cardiac shock waves on coronary artery disease. Methods The PubMed, Cochrane Library, Wed of Science, EMbase, ClinicalTrials.gov, CNKI, WanFang Data, VIP and CBM databases were electronically searched to collect randomized controlled trials and cohort studies related to the treatment of coronary artery disease with cardiac shock waves from inception to August 2022. After two evaluators independently screened the literature, extracted data, and evaluated the risk of bias of the included studies, a meta-analysis was conducted by using RevMan 5.4.1 and Stata 15.0 software. Results A total of 11 studies with 519 patients were included. The meta-analysis results revealed that compared with the control group, cardiac shock wave therapy could reduce hospitalization rates (RR=0.38, 95%CI 0.25 to 0.57, P<0.01), increase exercise time (SMD=0.93, 95%CI 0.17 to 1.70, P=0.02), and improve the Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS) angina grading (MD=−0.62, 95%CI −0.73 to −0.51, P<0.01), the New York Heart Association (NYHA) cardiac function grading (MD=−0.60, 95%CI −0.85 to −0.35, P<0.01), left ventricular ejection fraction (MD=4.81,95%CI 3.17 to 6.46, P<0.01), total score of the Seattle angina questionnaire (SAQ) (MD=10.87, 95%CI 4.63 to 17.12, P<0.01), and 6-min walking test (MD=85.06, 95%CI 31.02 to 139.09, P<0.01). Conclusion Cardiac shock wave therapy can improve cardiac function as well as the prognosis and exercise ability. Due to the limited quantity and quality of the included studies, more high-quality studies are needed to verify the above conclusion.