All-metal slow-wave structures are being paid great attention because of their advantages, such as good heat dissipation, high power capacity, wide passband, good wholeness of structure and large size etc. The emphases in this paper concentrate on the present state of study of four types of structures: helical groove, ring-plane, folded waveguide and periodically loaded waveguide, including theoretical analyses and practical applications. The problems and directions for future studies of these types of slow-wave circuits are also discussed. It is pointed out that all-metal slow-wave structures are suitable for applications in millimeter wave vacuum devices, like TWT, BWO, Gyro-TWT, and relativistic devices.