In terms of pharmacotherapy, there is no consensus on the types of drugs, their doses, or administration routes for HAPE. Thus, it is imperative to develop guidelines to standardize and optimize the treatment of HAPE. Based on the experience of several mountain sickness treatment centers and the efficacy of currently available drugs and strategies, in combination with recent advances in the treatment of HAPE, our research group proposed four regimens for early diagnosis and treatment of HAPE and conducted a prospective, randomized, controlled study to investigate their efficacy. A total of 400 patients with HAPE were divided into four groups and treated as follows: patients in group A received oxygen inhalation, dexamethasone, and aminophylline; patients in group B-C were treated as in group A, in addition to diuresis with furosemide in group B, blood pressure-lowering with nifedipine in group C, or L-arginine in group D. The efficacy and safety of these therapeutic regimens were compared. The treatment showing greatest therapeutic efficacy was subsequently used to prepare the guidelines for the treatment of HAPE. Overall, all four regimens were effective for the treatment of HAPE [9] . However, in terms of the time to resolution of symptom and signs, the time to resolution of chest X-ray findings, and duration of hospitalization, regimen B was superior to the other regimens. Interestingly, there were no marked differences between regimens A, C, and D. Furthermore, there were no differences in the incidence of adverse effects between regimens A, B, and D, or in the liver and kidney functions between all four regimens. These findings suggest that a regimen composed of oxygen inhalation, dexamethasone, aminophylline, and furosemide is effective, well tolerated, simple to follow, and thus offers a basic, standardized regimen for the treatment of HAPE Once the regimen has been selected, timely initiation of individualized treatment is a key factor that contributes towards its therapeutic efficacy. Our experience of on-site treatment of more than 300 patients with HAPE has shown that on-site individualized treatment is feasible, without increasing the risk for death [10] . Following the Yushu earthquake, the efficacy of this regimen was further confirmed as the prognosis after on-site treatment was significantly better than that after blind evacuation, which usually results in poor outcomes.