Sixty patients with primary lung cancer and under 40 years of age were operated from Jan. 1960 to June 1983. It comprised 3.7% of 1,635 lung cancers in all during the same period. The average age was 34.4 (17-39) years old. 35 were male and 25 female with a sex ratio of 1.4:1 which was lower than that reported for all lung cancers. Of the 60 patients, 31 (51.7%) presented with cough, 27 (45%) with bloody sputum, 23 (43.3%) chest pain and 13 (21.7%) feverishness. The average delay before the first medical examination was 6.4 months. It was over 1 year in 8 patients. The misdiagnosis rate was 76.7%. According to the TNM classification, the lesions were: stage I in 16.7%, stage II in 23.3% and stage III in 60%. By pathology, 45% were adenocarcinoma, 25% squamous cell carcinoma, 23.3% undifferentiated carcinoma and 6.7% squamous-adenocarcinoma. The resection rate was 83.3% (50 patients). The 1, 3, 5, 7 and 10 year survival rates were 83.3%, 42.5%, 32.3%, 18.5% and 21.1% which show that the survival rate of lung cancer in the young adults was similar to that of all ages. Most of the patients treated only by exploration died within 1.5 years. The authors believe that early diagnosis, early resection supplemented by radiotherapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapy might improve the survival rate of lung cancer in the young adults.