With the advancement in modern medical technology， the treatment level for lung cancer patients and subsequent survival rate have been greatly improved. Survival time has been gradually replaced by quality of life （QOL） to evaluate treatment outcomes of cancer patients. In future clinical studies， QOL assessment can be used as a prognostic factor in predicting patient survival time， and even as the ultimate goal to evaluate the effectiveness of lung cancer treatment. Currently there have been few studies about the correlation between surgical treatment for lung cancer and QOL in the world， and most of those studies have some shortcomings and limitations. This review summarizes the correlation between surgical treatment for patients with non-small cell lung cancer and QOL mainly from following aspects：firstly， QOL definition and common assessment tools to evaluate QOL of lung cancer patients， secondly， the impact of surgical treatment on QOL of patients with non-small cell lung cancer， lastly， the application of QOL evaluation and new prospect.