Among 428 patients who had undergone absolute curative resection of gastric cancer, 57 died of cancer recurrence. One hundred and seventeen patients who had survived longer than 5 years were used as controls. In the recurrence group, the primary lesion was larger and the lymph node metastasis more common as compared with the surviving controls. Prognostic serosal invasion was positive in 74% of the recurrence group and negative in 85% of the surviving controls. The most frequent mode of recurrence was hematogenous metastasis in negative prognostic serosal invasion (75%) and peritoneal disseminated metastasis in positive prognostic serosal invasion (52%).