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In lung cancer, postoperative prognosis can be generally predicted by the pathological stage, however, cancer recurrence has often been observed even in early stage patients. Therefore, accurate prediction is difficult. It has been suggested, as a reason, that this prediction does not consider host factors, i.e. immunological or nutritional status. In this prospective study, we evaluated the perioperative nutritional status as a host factor, and analyzed the relationship between the nutritional status and prognosis. Serum prealbumin levels were measured on preoperative and postoperative day 7 for forty patients with non small cell lung cancer who underwent lobectomy with lymph node dissection. We analyzed the correlation between serum prealbumin level and prognosis, and found that the prognosis of the group with a prealbumin level of more than 23 mg/dl during the preoperative period was statistically significantly better. Furthermore, the multivariate analysis revealed that a prealbumin level of more than 23 mg/dl during the preoperative period was an independent prognostic factor.