In this work we review the geothermal wellbore heat transmission, particularly the static and transient temperature profiles obtained in production and injection wells. We discuss the fundamental methods and approximations to describe the wellbore heat transmission and compare the results of various approaches in the literature. The objective of this work is to discuss the theory behind the wellbore heat transmission and then further investigate the effect of time on heat transmission. Moreover a new term called the stabilization time is introduced to describe and assess how "static" and "transient" are the static and transient temperature profiles, respectively. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.