Abstract: With the rapid progress of modern medical technology, especially in critical care medicine, the survival rate of patients with acute respiratory failure(ARDS) with mechanical ventilation in the intensive care unit(ICU) has increased significantly, followed by the increase of the survivors' functional prognosis and the quality of life. In order to improve the functional prognosis of these patients and improve the quality of life of the survivors, early prevention and rehabilitation are particularly important. Early rehabilitation for critically ill patients is beneficial to preventing and treating complications, reducing heart and lung function decline and skeletal muscle weakness in bed. Early rehabilitation treatment can also help shorten the time of mechanical ventilation, realize early withdrawal of mechanical auxiliary ventilation, and achieve the goal of reducing medical expenditure and improving the post-life quality of the survivor. Intensive care unit-acquired weakness(ICU-AW) is a common and serious complication of patients in ICU. It is also one of the hot spots of research and attention of many domestic and foreign scholars in recent years, but there is no special drug for treatment at present. This article is based on the ICU-AW, its pathogenesis and risk factors, illness condition assessment, the feasibility and the clinical benefit of the early rehabilitation of the patients with mechanical ventilation, the treatment timing of early rehabilitation intervention, the status and implementation of early rehabilitation in the world, early rehabilitation methods, the adverse events are all reviewed in this paper. These studies indicate that early rehabilitation of patients with mechanical ventilation is safe and effective, and the incidence of adverse events in early rehabilitation is low. It has the great significance to prevent complications, shorten the time of mechanical ventilation and hospital stay, and improve the prognosis and quality of their life.