OBJECTIVE To summarize the vascular surgical strategies for chest and abdomen tumors with the invasion of great vessels. METHODS The clinical data were collected for 67 patients undergoing surgical treatment for tumors with the invasion of thoracic and abdominal great vessels at our hospital from January 2001 to June 2009. Then a retrospective analysis was performed. Among this dataset, there were 31 cases with only vessel wall invasion and 20 cases with only intravascular tumor thrombus. In the meanwhile, both the invasion of vascular walls and the formation of tumor thrombus were located in 16 patients. RESULTS Among 67 operated patients, various strategies were used, including surgical adhesion lysis (n = 15), vascular resection direct suture (n = 24), artificial blood vessel patch (n = 10), pericardial patch (n = 3), artificial vascular replacement or bypass (n = 15) and cavity thrombectomy (n = 36). Cavity thrombectomy was performed under cardiopulmonary bypass for 8 patents with tumor invasion of right atrium. Among them, 58 patients received radical tumor resection while palliative resection was performed for 9 patients with a rate of complete resection at 86.6%. There was no intraoperative mortality with the perioperative death of 8 cases. A follow-up study was successfully conducted for 52 patients. And 7 patients were lost to follow-up. The overall follow-up rate was 88.1%. By June 2009, the survival period of this group of patients was as follows: 18 cases (> 48 months), 29 cases (> 24 months), 38 cases (> 12 months), 50 cases (> 6 months) and 2 cases (≤ 6 months). Among these patients, the major cause of mortality was tumor metastasis. The patients with kidney cancer showed the most favorable surgical outcomes. CONCLUSIONS Managed by a variety of vascular surgical techniques, the patients with tumors involving major blood vessels may achieve an excellent success rate of tumor resection and a better postoperative quality-of-life.