Objective To study the clinical characteristics of pulmonary cryptococcosis in patients without HIV infection and to determine the value of cryptococcal capsular polysaccharide antigen (CrAg) detected via lateral flow assay (LFA) in assessing the treatment outcome of pulmonary cryptococcosis in these patients.Methods A total of 114 patients with pulmonary cryptococcosis and without HIV infection who were treated in Yongchuan Hospital Affiliated to Chongqing Medical University between January 2019 and December 2020 were included. All the patients underwent CrAg-LFA screening, while the histopathology was considered as the golden standard. The CrAg titer and the treatment outcome at different time points (1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year after treatment) were recorded. The clinical characteristics of patients with different CrAg-LFA results and the outcomes in patients with different CrAg titers were compared.Results There was no difference in the positivity of CrAg among patients with different gender, age, levels of C-reactive protein, and white blood cell count (P > 0.05). The positive rate of CrAg was different among patients with distinct clinical symptoms (P < 0.05), but not among patients with distinct imaging characteristics including the morphologic features, the distribution of lesions, the affected pulmonary lobes, and the extent of the lesions (P > 0.05). The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value of LFA in determining the positivity of CrAg were 95% (95% CI: 0.818, 0.991), 100% (95% CI: 0.939, 1.000), 100% (95% CI: 0.886, 1.000), and 97.37% (95% CI: 0.900, 0.995), respectively. The CrAg titer decreased as the time from treatment increased (P < 0.05), and the treatment outcome was different among the time points (P < 0.05). The CrAg-LFA of 11 cases converted to negative results during the treatment, and the rest patients were either cured or improved. After 1 year of treatment, the treatment outcome in patients with low titers of CrAg was greater than those with high titers of CrAg (P < 0.05).Conclusions The imaging features are not specific in patients with pulmonary cryptococcosis and without HIV infection. In contrast, CrAg-LFA can effectively evaluate the treatment outcome of these patients, and is of great significance for clinical practice.