A total of 238 patients who received curative hepatic resections during the last 10 yr were observed to search for the risk factors linked to early tumor recurrence of human hepatocellular carcinoma after hepatectomy. The results revealed that tumor size, tumor appearance and DNA ploidy were the factors in predicting tumor recurrence after resection for hepatocellular carcinoma. Patients with a tumor size less than or equal to 5 cm or a tumor appearance of the solitary type had better disease-free survival than did those with a tumor size greater than 5 cm or a tumor appearance of multiple/daughter nodule types (p < 0.06). Although patients with pattern III (aneuploid with 2 2 GO/Gl peaks) hepatoma had fewer statistically significant differences (p = 0.19) than did those with pattern I (diploid) or pattern II (aneuploid with single GO/G1 peak) tumors in predicting tumor recurrence, they did have poorer results in terms of the overall survival rate (p < 0.05). We conclude that patients with hepatocellular carcinoma having the aforementioned risk factors should be observed closely. (HEPATOLOGY 1992: 16: 1367-13 7 1.1 HCC is one of the most malignant diseases in Asian countries, and it also is the leading cause of cancer death in men and the third leading cause in women in Taiwan (1). Although much effort has been devoted to curative treatment of HCC and the results have given us some encouragement for the short term ( 2 -4 ~, long-term results are still unsatisfactory. It has been generally accepted that postoperative tumor recurrence is the main cause of poor prognosis in patients with resectable HCC (5-7). Many factors. including tumor size, cut margin and portal vein invasion, for example, have been studied to predict the risk of tumor recurrence after resection for HCC (8-10). Because some controversy exists regarding the factors just described, different