Surgical operation is the only method to cure gastric cancer, and perigastric lymph node dissection is the key point and difficult point in gastric surgery. Through long-term clinical practice, the surgical approach of radical gastric cancer has gradually become unified, that is, while the diseased organ is fully resected, the corresponding metastatic lymph nodes and the infiltrated adjacent organs should be removed. The scope of lymph node removal is still controversial. Some scholars in western countries believe that a major gastrectomy (D1 radical surgery), which mainly removes the paragastric lymph nodes, is sufficient, while scholars in East Asian countries such as Japan, China and Korea have adopted D2 lymph node dissection as the standard radical surgery for gastric cancer. D1 radical surgery for gastric cancer is to remove most of the lymph nodes at station 1 along with the diseased stomach, which is actually equivalent to the traditional resection of most of the stomach and omentectomy, and then to remove the enlarged lymph nodes visible to the naked eye. In D2 radical surgery for gastric cancer, not only the lesion is fully resected, but also the perigastric lymph nodes of stations 1 and 2 are completely contoured, and the small and large omentum and the stomach are externally resected with the omental sac. Despite the different opinions of these two lymph node dissection approaches, standard D2 radical surgery for gastric cancer plays an important role in the surgical treatment of gastric cancer in Asia, including our country. Under the current situation that progressive gastric cancer is the majority in China, many large medical centers have accumulated rich experience in standard D2 radical surgery for gastric cancer. However, the promotion is very uneven, and many primary hospitals still use the surgical approach of the 1960s and 1970s, i.e., resection of the diseased stomach, large omentum and enlarged lymph nodes as D2 radical surgery for gastric cancer. In most primary hospitals, it is difficult to diagnose early gastric cancer accurately, and most cases are progressive gastric cancer, so it is especially urgent and important to promote standard D2 radical surgery for gastric cancer in primary hospitals. In the past, the efficacy of gastric cancer in China was poor, the surgical resection rate was low, and the 5-year survival rate after surgery was only about 20%. Since 1987, when standard D2 radical surgery for gastric cancer began to be carried out in China, there has been a breakthrough in the efficacy of gastric cancer surgery in China, and the 5-year survival rate has increased to 57.6%. D2 radical surgery for gastric cancer is designed and formulated according to the biological characteristics of gastric cancer, therefore, D2 radical surgery for gastric cancer is regarded as the standard procedure for progressive gastric cancer in today’s medical field, the biggest advantage of which is that the main cause of metastasis and recurrence, i.e., the lymph nodes at stations 1 and 2, is completely cleared, thus greatly improving the surgical efficacy. In terms of preventing postoperative metastasis and improving postoperative survival, D2 radical surgery has shown obvious advantages.