Esophageal pressure monitoring provides a minimally invasive method to assess the pleural pressure, which can be used to differentiate the lung and chest wall mechanics. The information of transpulmonary pressure, work of breathing, intrinsic positive end-expiratory pressure and respiratory muscle performance can facilitate the proper setting of mechanical ventilation. Esophageal pressure monitoring is still not routinely used in the clinical setting because of difficulty in esophageal balloon catheter placement and data interpretation due to esophageal pressure monitoring has certain technical requirements, and the measurement results are influenced by many factors such as airbag volume, location, esophageal wall elasticity and mediastinal organ weight. In this review, we introduced technique for esophageal pressure measurement and calculation of transpulmonary pressure aiming to promote the clinical application of esophageal pressure monitoring.