By reviewing 122 cases of postoperative death from gastric carcinoma over the past 6 years and 30 autopsy cases of gastric carcinoma, the significance of recurrence and the role of curative surgery were studied clinically as well as from the view point of autopsy.The time lapse between the detection of biological abnormality and the appearance of signs or symptoms was 6.9 months. Patients became symptomatic 4.8 months after the appearance of signs of recurrence, falling into cachexia in 2.9 months.No correlation between the disease-free interval and the relapse interval was apparent (r=0.3866), irrespective of the site of recurrence (liver, r=0.3049; lymph node, r=0.3534; peritoneal dissemination, r=0.3656). The relapse interval in cases with curative surgery was shorter than that in cases with palliative resection when patients had peritoneal dissemination or lymph node metastases, indicating that findings were made intraoperatively.At the time of autopsy, no gross difference between the sites of recurrence was noted, regardless of surgical curability.