OBJECTIVES: Although wedge resection is the most common surgical procedure for pulmonary metastases from colorectal cancer, there are few reports about segmentectomy for colorectal metastasectomy. METHODS: This was a subset analysis of a Japanese nationwide retrospective study of resected pulmonary metastases from colorectal cancer. The study included 553 patients who underwent segmentectomies ( n  = 98) or wedge resections ( n  = 455) without preoperative chemotherapy between January 2004 and December 2008. Recurrence patterns, recurrence-free survival and overall survival were analysed for each procedure. RESULTS: As for the patients' background factors, only the median size of resected metastases was different between patients with segmentectomies (median 18 mm, range 5-50 mm) and wedge resections (14 mm, 5-51 mm) ( P  < 0.001). Prolonged air leak developed more frequently in those undergoing segmentectomy compared with wedge resection (5.1% vs 1.8%) ( P  = 0.048). The resection-margin recurrence rate was higher in patients who underwent wedge resection compared with segmentectomy (7.3% vs 2.0%; P  = 0.035). The 5-year recurrence-free survival was 48.8% in patients with segmentectomy and 36.0% in patients with wedge resections. The 5-year overall survival was 80.1% in patients with segmentectomy and 68.5% in patients with wedge resection. Multivariable analysis revealed that the surgical procedure, segmentectomy, was a significant favourable factor for recurrence (hazard ratio: 0.63, 95% confidence interval: 0.44-0.87, P  = 0.005), but not for overall survival (hazard ratio: 0.65, 95% confidence interval: 0.38-1.05, P  = 0.080). CONCLUSIONS: Segmentectomy demonstrated a good efficacy with less resection-margin recurrence in patients with resectable pulmonary-limited metastasis from colorectal cancer.