Death is a topic that most people do not want to talk about, especially for lung cancer patients. In the perception of many ordinary patients and even primary care doctors, only early stage lung cancer patients have the opportunity to undergo surgery. Patients with advanced lung cancer can only be treated palliatively to improve their quality of life. In fact, some patients with locally advanced lung cancer also have the opportunity to undergo surgery. Although there are more and more means to treat lung cancer nowadays, only surgical resection can bring patients the chance of radical cure, and the quality of surgery has a crucial impact on the metastasis and recurrence of tumor. Therefore, for non-small cell lung cancer, which accounts for 80% of lung cancer, doctors need to conduct detailed systemic examination to determine whether there are distant metastases and the extent of local infiltration, and if possible, surgical resection should usually be the first choice for treatment. However, in fact, due to the insidious symptoms of early stage lung cancer, less than 20% of lung cancer patients can be directly operated at the time of diagnosis. So, are the remaining patients who have more than 80% of lung cancer lost to surgery? It is currently believed that some advanced lung cancers with locally advanced stage and combined with isolated metastatic lesions also have the opportunity for surgery. The clinical definition of locally advanced lung cancer refers to patients with large tumors that have invaded other adjacent tissues and organs or have metastases in regional lymph nodes, but have not yet metastasized to distant organs. Such patients can nowadays be treated with other comprehensive treatments to shrink the tumor lesions first and then strive for surgical resection. There are also some patients with stage IV, even though the cancer has metastasized, but if the metastases are solitary, they still have a chance for surgical resection. For example, if lung cancer with intracranial metastasis, resection of metastatic lesions and lung lobes can also be performed at the same time or in stages. For a specialist, lung cancer surgery not only emphasizes the removal of the entire lung lobe where the tumor is located, but systematic lymph node dissection is also a very important step in lung cancer surgery. “Because whether lymph node dissection is complete or not directly affects not only the efficacy of the surgery, but also whether the postoperative staging is accurate, thus affecting the correct formulation of the postoperative adjuvant treatment plan.” In conclusion, different patients should choose individualized treatment plans that organically combine surgical treatment and other comprehensive treatments, and the majority of lung cancer patients can prolong their survival, and a significant portion of them can be cured. It is understood that the overall 5-year survival rate of non-small cell lung cancer after surgery is 30.1%-42%, including 60%-80% for stage I, 40%-60% for stage II, and 15%-30% for stage III. The mortality rate for surgery is only 0.8% to 3.1%. In clinical practice, we should encourage lung cancer patients to live positively and optimistically and grasp all chances of survival.