Objective To examine the clinical utility of postoperation symptom inventory. Methods According to the current cancer symptom assessment tools, clinical guidelines and expert interviews, we preliminarily selected 10 common symptoms as an alternative item. Postoperative symptom assessment scale of lung cancer patients was formulated through expert evaluation. And 383 patients in eight hospitals were evaluated and validated using the scale to analyze the reliability and validity. Results Postoperation symptom inventory was easy to operate and evaluate for postoperative lung cancer patients in 8 symptoms (pain, shortness of breath, fatigue, cough, insomnia, throat pain, sweating and constipation). The scale was with high reliability. Cronbach' s α was 0.888. This scale was also with reliable validity. Content validity index was 0.900. There were two common factors with high cumulative proportion in variance(47.70% and 57.46%). And each question had high factor load and communality (>0.40) in the exploratory factor analysis. Conclusion The postoperation symptom inventory has excellent reliability and validity in patients with lung cancer surgery.