BackgroundLung cancer is one of the cancers with the highest morbidity and mortality. During the last decade, the trends of clinical characteristics, surgical treatments and survival of lung cancer patients in China have remained unclear.MethodsAll lung cancer patients operated on from 2011 to 2020 were identified in a prospectively maintained database of Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center.ResultsA total of 7,800 lung cancer patients were included in this study. Within the past 10 years, the average age at diagnosis of the patients remained stable, the proportion of asymptomatic, female and nonsmoking patients increased, and the average tumor size decreased from 3.766 to 2.300 cm. In addition, the proportion of early stage and adenocarcinoma increased, while that of squamous cell carcinoma decreased. Among the patients, the proportion of patients having video-assisted thoracic surgery increased. More than 80% of the patients underwent lobectomy and systematic nodal dissection over the 10 years. Additionally, both the average postoperative length of stay and 1-, 3-, and 6-month postoperative mortality decreased. Moreover, the 1-, 3-, and 5-year overall survival (OS) rates of all the operable patients increased from 89.8, 73.9, and 63.8% to 99.6, 90.7, and 80.8%, respectively. The 5-year OS rates of the patients with stage I, II, and III lung cancer were 87.6, 79.9, and 59.9%, respectively, which were higher than those in other published data.ConclusionThere were significant changes in the clinicopathological characteristics, surgical treatments and survival outcomes of the patients with operable lung cancer from 2011 to 2020.