Jie Zhang,1–3,* Shengfei Wang,1–3,* Lei Wang,1,2,* Rui Wang,1,2,* Sufeng Chen,1,2 Bin Pan,1,2 Yihua Sun,1,2 Haiquan Chen1,4 1Department of Thoracic Surgery, Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Oncology, Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Oncology, Longhua Hospital, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Thoracic Surgery, Shanghai Chest Hospital, Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Objective: B-cell-lymphoma-2 (Bcl-2) is a proto-oncogene that plays an important role in the regulation of apoptosis and cell survival. However, there are much conflicting data in the literature concerning the association between Bcl-2 and prognosis in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). There is little in the way of meta-analysis focused on Bcl-2 and its effect on NSCLC prognosis. This study was performed to provide an assessment of whether expression levels of Bcl-2 are associated with prognosis in patients with NSCLC.Materials and methods: We searched PubMed, the Cochrane Library, and China National Knowledge Infrastructure for all eligible studies. The combined hazard ratios (HRs) and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) in terms of overall survival were evaluated.Results: Fifty published studies including 6,863 patients with lung cancer were included in this meta-analysis. Overall, Bcl-2 was expressed in 33% of the NSCLC tumors studied. Our analysis indicates that NSCLC patients with Bcl-2-positive expression have a better prognosis than those with Bcl-2-negative expression in both Asian and non-Asian study populations (HR 0.79, 95% CI 0.72–0.87, P