Aim To illustrate patterns of statin therapy in patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) in central-western urban China from 2001 to 2011, and identify factors affecting the use of statins. Methods A two-stage random sampling design was used to create a representative sample of patients who were admitted to hospital for AMI in central-western urban China in 1,6 and 2011. In the first phase, simple random-sampling procedure was used to identify participating hospitals. In the second phase, patients were selected from each sampled hospital in above 3 years through a systematic sampling approach. Medical records were centrally abstracted to get patients’ information. The findings were weighted for each year to represent the overall situation. Binary logistic regression analysis was used to identify factors related to the use of in-hospital statins. Results 31 randomly sampled urban hospitals in central-western China participated in the study, and 3 354 AMI admissions were included in analysis. There has been a significant increase in the use of statin therapy, the proportion of which was 19.7% in 1,9% in 2006, and 91.1% in 2011. Overall, statin use significantly increased among all low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDLC) groups during 10 years. Lovastatin was the most common stain in 2001 and it turned to be atorvastatin in 2011. Logistic regression analysis showed that patients who smoke (OR=1.36; 95% CI 1.07~1.73, P=0.011) were more likely to be treated with statin therapy. Conclusion During the past decade, the use of statin therapy has dramatically increased in central-western China. However, a lot still needs to be done to optimize the use of statin therapy among AMI patients.