The recurrence rate of liver cancer is particularly high, especially in advanced cases.[32,33] It is widely acknowledged that factors such as tumor differentiation, tumor size, lymph node metastasis, and pathological stage are associated with the recurrence of liver cancer.[34,35] Our study showed that serum PTX3 levels were significantly correlated with TNM stage, tumor size, and lymph node metastasis in liver cancer (Table 2). Here, PTX3 is linked to metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes.