Abstract: Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is an acute, progressive and fatal clinical condition. Its mortality rate is still high because of complicated pathogenesis and limited treatment. Recently, many advances have been made in the study of the pathogenesis of ARDS by using biomarkers, proteomics, genomics and other new methods, and many experiments have been carried out to study the new method and mode of ARDS prognosis evaluation. The future trend is combining multiple parameters so as to diagnose ARDS accurately, recognize the heterogeneity between different patients, determine the prognosis, and take individualized treatment measures.