We investigated changes in highly sensitive lens culinaris agglutinin A-reactive fraction of alpha-fetoprotein (hsAFP-L3) measured using a novel method and its predictive ability for prognosis in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who underwent curative hepatectomy, comparing to other HCC tumor markers, that is, AFP, des-gamma-carboxy prothrombin (DCP), and AFP-L3 measured with conventional method (cAFP-L3). Here, AFP is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.