In recent decades, lung cancer has become the most common malignant tumor worldwide, and the results of the third cause-of-death review survey conducted in China in the 21st century show that lung cancer has ranked first among cancer causes of death. In addition, China has gradually entered into an aging society, and coupled with the large number of smokers, lung cancer will remain a top priority for cancer prevention and treatment in China in the coming decades. Lung cancer, like other cancers, is preventable and controllable. A lot of epidemiology shows that the high risk factors for lung cancer are: smoking, air pollution, occupational factors, family genetic factors, nutritional factors, psychosocial factors and so on. If there are certain high-risk factors in life, thoracic surgeons suggest that they should have a regular physical examination once a year, especially for those who are older than 45 years old, so that problems can be detected and treated early, which is preventable for lung cancer. If lung cancer is in early stage, it can be cured; in middle and late stage, it can survive with tumor through treatment; in late stage, treatment can improve the quality of life. Lung cancer treatment methods include surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy, traditional Chinese medicine and immunotherapy, etc. At present, surgery is still the main treatment method. What should we do if we have lung cancer? First of all, a thoracic surgeon should conduct scientific and correct clinical staging, and then standardized treatment should be carried out. According to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines, lung cancer should be treated according to the stage, and the treatment methods for different stages of lung cancer are different. Therefore, scientific and correct clinical staging before formal treatment is very important. For example, if a patient with early stage does not choose surgery for the first treatment, but chooses chemotherapy or radiotherapy, or even Chinese medicine treatment or observation, once the tumor progresses, it will be too late for surgery; or if a patient with advanced stage chooses surgery instead of chemotherapy or radiotherapy as soon as he comes, then the effect of treatment will not be achieved at all. As a matter of fact, there is no early, middle and late stage in pulmonary surgery. The term early, middle and late stage is a non-professional term, and the real clinical stage is stage I, II, III and IV. At present, the most commonly used clinical staging method for lung cancer is to adopt the international TNM staging (T: stands for tumor size, N: stands for lymph node metastasis, M: stands for distant metastasis), and to determine the T stage, N stage and M stage of lung cancer through some necessary examination means, for example, chest CT scan and fiberoptic bronchoscopy are often used as the means of T stage of lung cancer in clinical practice; the main examinations of N stage The main examination means for N-stage are chest CT, mediastinoscopy, ultrasound endoscopy-guided esophagoscopic fine-needle aspiration biopsy (EUS-FNA) and bronchoscopic biopsy (EBUS-TBNA), etc. Chest CT scan, head MRI, abdominal ultrasound, whole-body bone scan, positron emission computed tomography (PET and PET-CT) are commonly used as examination means for M-stage, and comprehensive T-stage, N-stage and M-stage are used to further determine the clinical T-stage, N-stage and M-stage. Staging further determines clinical stages I, II, III and IV. Usually, the early stage is mainly referred to I and some II patients, and the rest should be classified as intermediate and late stage. After systematic and relatively accurate staging followed by comprehensive treatment, we can achieve early cure, long-term survival or cure with tumor in the middle stage, longer survival in the late stage and better quality of survival within the survival period.