Surgery alone is currently still accepted "standard of care" for patients with operable NSCLC, this includes stages IA and IIB, as well as selected early subsets of IIIA disease. In more advanced and inoperable stage III disease, combinations of chemotherapy and radiotherapy remain the standard treatment approach for patients with good performance status. The role of surgery following induction therapy in these advanced stage III patients is at the moment not conclusively defined. More evidence from randomized trials is clearly needed to tailor treatment for the large number of patients that present in these locally advanced stages. Enrollment of patients into ongoing prospective clinical trials should be encouraged, whenever possible, to further define prognostic factors and improve multimodality strategies in this clinical setting.