The purpose of this study is to establish the current state of research knowledge concerning patient gender and health communication. The relations among patient gender, health communication and compliance, and satisfaction variables were reviewed. It was found that there is a lack of research using patient gender as a meaningful variable in health communication research. Further- more, because of poor research designs in many studies, many of the conclu- sions about the role of gender in health communication interaction were found to be suspect. Suggestions for improving future research are (a) including patient gender as a significant variable in research designs; (b) using research procedures appropriate to the research being conducted; and (c) using a more descriptive, rules-based epistemological approach to forming research questions.