We found that preoperative FR+ CTC level positively correlated with poor prognostic factors as CEA, CA19-9 level, lymph node metastasis, PM, and advanced TNM stage (Table 2). To exclude the interaction of various factors, we performed multivariate analysis for RFS and for the first time demonstrated that preoperative FR+ CTC was an independent prognostic factor for early recurrence and short RFS in gastric cancer patients after curative gastrectomy (Table 4). Here, CEACAM5 is linked to metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes.