For a long time, the monitoring of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) has many drawbacks, such as complex diagnostic criteria, high subjectivity, low comparability, low attributable mortality, and difficulty in automated monitoring. The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention proposed a new monitoring definition of ventilator-associated event (VAE) in January 2013 to address the existing problems of VAP. VAE monitoring can better predict the adverse prognosis of patients, adopt objective diagnostic criteria, and realize automatic monitoring. However, VAE surveillance also has some shortcomings: poor identification of VAP patients, lack of sufficient evidence of preventive strategies so far, inconclusive application in neonates and children groups, as easy to be interfered with as VAP. The applicability of VAE in China, its risk factors and preventive strategies need to be further studied.