ObjectiveTo explore the clinical value of three early predictive scale of lung injury (ALI) in patients with high risk of acute lung injury (ALI) after lung cancer surgery.MethodsA convenient sampling method was used in this study. A retrospective analysis was performed on patients with lung cancer underwent lung surgery. The patients were divided into an ALI group and a non-ALI group according to ALI diagnostic criteria. Three kinds of lung injury predictive scoring methods were used, including lung injury prediction score (LIPS), surgical lung injury prediction (SLIP) and SLIP-2. The differences in the scores of the two groups were compared. The correlation between the three scoring methods was also analyzed. The diagnostic value was analyzed by drawing receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves.ResultsA total of 400 patients underwent lung cancer surgery, and 38 patients (9.5%) developed ALI after operation. Among them, 2 cases progressed to acute respiratory distress syndrome and were treated in intensive care unit. There were no deaths. The predictive scores of the patients in the ALI group were higher than those in the non-ALI group, and the difference was statistically significant (all P<0.001). There was a good correlation between the three scoring methods (allP<0.001). The three scoring methods had better diagnostic value for early prediction of high risk ALI patients after lung cancer surgery and their area under ROC curve (AUC) were larger than 0.8. LIPS score performed better than others, with an AUC of 0.833, 95%CI (0.79, 0.87).ConclusionThree predictive scoring methods may be applied to early prediction of high risk ALI patients after lung cancer surgery, in which LIPS performs better than others.