The new prognostic score had a higher AUC value for predicting the 5-year survival of patients with HCC within the Milan criteria after curative resection (0.690) than AFP (0.501), PNI (0.634) and GGT/ALT (0.624). According to the survival analysis, OS and DFS of patients with higher PNI-GGT/ALT score are both shorter than patients with lower score(P < 0.05), which indicated that PNI-GGT/ALT grade might be a promising stratification tool for HCC patients within Milan criteria. The gene discussed is AFP; the disease is hepatocellular carcinoma.