Patients and family members often ask how long they can live, the brief answers are as follows: Lung cancer is a malignant tumor with high mortality rate and one of the main causes of death among Chinese residents. Among the lung cancer surgery cases, the sample results showed that: the 5-year survival rate of stage IA is about 70%, the 5-year survival rate of stage IB is about 66%, the 5-year survival rate of stage IIA is about 35%, the 5-year survival rate of stage IIB is about 25%, the 5-year survival rate of stage IIIA surgery patients is about 20%, and the 5-year survival rate of stage IV lung cancer is less than 1%. (Note: The data are from our hospital sample statistics, if there is any difference with the literature, it is due to different sampling, but the overall data should not be much different) What is the 5-year survival rate? How long can a patient live after diagnosis of lung cancer? For example, the 5-year survival rate for stage IA is about 70%, which means that 70 out of 100 patients with stage IA lung cancer will live to 5 years after systematic treatment. It means that 20 out of 100 patients with stage IIIA surgery will live to 5 years. One may ask what happens after 5 years? It has been reported that the 20-year survival rate for patients undergoing stage IIIA surgery is about 7%, which means that about 7 out of 100 patients undergoing stage IIIA surgery will live to 20 years. What kind of psychological expectations should patients and their families have? I think it depends on the stage of the disease at the time of diagnosis. If it is early stage (stage I, stage II), you should try to achieve a cure through active surgery and comprehensive treatment. If it is more advanced (e.g. stage IV), it should also be treated actively with chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted drugs, etc. However, the main purpose of treatment at this time should be to improve the patient’s quality of life, such as improving dyspnea, pain control, etc.