Abstract: Objective ： To increase the awareness of lung cancer complicating pulmonary throm-boembolism(PTE). Methods ： Routine autopsy pathological data of 1"3 patients died of lung cancer who admitted to PLA General Hospital from 1990 to 2002 were retrospectively investigated, then the clinical and pathological data of 8 patients among them who associated with PTE proved by autopsy were analyzed comparatively. Results ： 1) Of the 153 cases, there were 8 cases complicating PTE, but only 1 case was diagnosed based on clinical symptoms and CT during life. The incidence of PTE was 5.3%(8/153), and misdiagnosis rate was 87.5%(7/8). 2) The characteristic of embolus was proved to be throm-bus by autopsy in all 8 cases. The emboli occurred both in the main pulmonary artery (PA) and in the main branch of the left and right PA in 3 sudden death patients, and one of them with deep venous thrombosis (DVT) and mural thrombus in the left ventricle. The thrombi were located in the middle and small branch of PA in the other 5 cases, and three of them with DVT. 3) There were no typical clinicalpresentation in those patients with lung cancer complicating PTE. 4) The most common pathological type of lung cancer complicating PTE was adenocarcinoma. Conclusions ： Lung cancer complicating PTE was not unusual owing to hypercoagulation state, but misdiagnosis rate was high due to lack of di- agnostic consciousness of PTE.