Abstract: Objective : To investigate the pathological characteristics of 158 cases of early gastric cancer and the related clinical significance. Methods : From January 1972 to December 2003, we examined 2,792 specimens ofstomach cancer obtained through radical gastrectomy. Among those there were 158 samples from patientswith early gastric cancer. Tumor diameter, depth of invasion, histological type, number of lymph node dissection and lymph node metastases were analyzed. Another randomly selected 15 cases of early gastric cancerunderwent immunohistochemical analysis with I d1 and PCNA antibodies. Results : There were 123 males and35 females. The cancer was limited to mucosa in 100 cases (63.29%) and invaded into submucosa in 58 cases (36.71%). Early gastric cancer was mainly located in lesser curvature of stomach (61.39%), and was mainly types Ⅱ (59.49%) in gross pathology and tubular adenocarcinoma (80.38%) in histopathology. The incidence of lymph node metastases was 7.59% (12 of 158), with 3.16% (5 of 158) in mucosal cancer and 4.43%(7 of 158) in submucosal cancer. The number of lymph nodes with metastasis was 12.37 in the mucosal cancer group and 17.31 in the submucosal cancer group, with a significant statistical significance (P<0.05). Thenumber of dissected lymph nodes was 1,204 in the 100 cases of mucosal cancer and 1,003 in the 58 cases ofsubmucosal cancer, with a significant difference (P<0.01). There were 43 cases (27.21%) who completed thefollow up. No significant difference was found in postoperative survival between the patients with metastaticlymph nodes (median 7.37 years) and patients without metastatic lymph nodes(median 8.59 years) (P>0.05). The expression of Id1 and PCNA was stronger in gastric cancer than in the normal control group (P<0.05). Conclusion : In cases of early gastric cancer in this study, there were more males. Metastasis did not af-fect the postoperative survival. The malignant biological character of early gastric cancer was proven bystrong expression of Id1 and PCNA.