We reviewed the role of pulmonary resection for metastatic pulmonary lesions in our hospital. Over a 25 year period, 58 patients underwent 61 thoracotomies. Pulmonary resections were done in 56 patients. Two were done by explorations and one of them was only for diagnostic purpose. The operative mortality was 6.6% (< 30 days). Long-term follow-up in 45 patients whose primary tumor was controlled and secondary tumor was resected revealed 1, 3, and 5 year accumulative survival rates of 76.8%, 37.9% and 18.0% respectively. Patients with multiple pulmonary metastases resulted in lower survival rates than solitary lesions (P < 0.05). Postoperative survival rates were also found to be affected by the tumor doubling time (r = 0.8460). The surgical indications for secondary lung tumor were discussed.