Objective: This survey was a non-intervention study, which aimed to investigate symptom burden and treatment status in cancer patient with bone metastasis, and to make out whether patients received the normative treatment. Methods: We designed a questionnaire, the main items of which include patient's symptom burden, previous and ongoing treatment. We used it to investigate 120 patients from six different medical agencies. We examined the association between symptoms using Spearman's rank correlation. SPSS software was used to analyze data. Results: The data of one hundred one questionnaires were completed and fitted for analysis. The five most prevalent symptoms were fatigue (84.2%), unhappiness (83.2%), pain (77.2%), dry mouth (77.2%) and lack of appetite (73.3%). Three symptom clusters were identified. Cluster 1 included anxiety and unhappiness and accounted for 61.4% in all patients. Cluster 2 included pain, fatigue and constipation and accounted for 39.6% in all patients. Cluster 3 included nausea, vomiting, lack of appetite and accounted for 27.7% in all patients. Cronbach's alpha coefficient demonstrated high internal reliability in the clusters, with a coefficient ranging from 0.65 to 0.84. The proportion of patients receiving analgesic therapy, bisphosphates therapy, palliative chemotherapy and radiotherapy were 70.3%, 63.4%, 58.4% and 36.6% respectively. Pain in various degree was obviously alleviated (P < 0.01) after analgesic therapy. Among the surveyed patients, 64 patients received bisphosphates therapy, while the administration of zoledronic acid accounted for the most large proportion. The average duration of bisphosphates administration was 5.79 months (SD = 7.43). Patients who received radiotherapy adopted multiple fractions treating mode. Conclusion: Symptom burden was common and severe in patients with bone metastasis, which often appeared as symptom cluster, and significantly affected their quality of life (QOL). The normative treatment should be strengthened to manage and control patients' symptoms and improve their QOL. The analgesic therapy was normative in patients with bone metastasis. Reasons impeding patients to receive bisphosphates were in varieties. More propaganda should be done to generalized bisphosphates therapy for patients with bone metastasis. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.