Heart failure is a great threat to human health. When conventional drug treatments have limitations and transplantation confronts problems of immunoreaction and lacking donors, the ventricular assist device (VAD) has irreplaceable importance. The VAD substitutes total or part of the heart as a blood pump by using mechanical or biologicmechanical method. Since its clinical application from the 1960s, after a long time of research and application practice, it has been applied to postoperative cardiovascular recovery, heart transplantation and replacement, myocardiac recovery and permanent therapy for heart failure. In the future, VAD will develop toward such characteristics as miniaturization, high efficiency, low noise, low power consumption, fewer complications, wireless energy transmission and easy implantation, which will surely make it one of the major treatments for heart failure. This article will have a comprehensive review on the development of VAD, its clinical application, current problems and future development direction of VAD.