Drilling leakage is not only a common phenomenon, but also one of the important factors that affect drilling safety and penetration rates. This paper studies the mechanism of severe leakage, plugging measures, plugging materials and technology, and analyzes the severe leakage problems and countermeasures in drilling at home and abroad. Meanwhile, the methods to treat the severe drilling leakage at home and abroad are summarized, and its advantages and disadvantages are also analyzed. The new technologies to solve the karst cave leakage can be summarized into three major categories: the polymer gel plugging, chemical plugging and cement plugging. Moreover, this paper emphatically introduces the lab testing and field application results of a new chemical gel plugging technique and an intelligent gel plugging technique, with the success rate of field application up to 98%.