”Do you know? For gastric cancer, what is the difference in survival rates between specialist and non-specialist surgeons after surgery? Twice! Twice! Twice as much!” Epidemiological data show that nearly 1 million new cases of gastric cancer occur each year worldwide, with nearly half of them in China. Due to the lack of a universal screening mechanism, 90% of clinical cases are progressive stage patients. Coupled with the fact that standardized surgery has not been promoted, the overall cure rate of gastric cancer still hovers at 20%-30%. In the diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer, it can be said that the misunderstanding of patients and primary health care workers has caused the high incidence rate and low cure rate of gastric cancer in China. Many people think that gastric cancer is a disease that may occur only in middle-aged and elderly people, and as a result, the best treatment time is missed. The fact is that gastric cancer is not uncommon among young people, which is the main reason why most of the clinically diagnosed cases are patients in progressive stage. Some patients and their family members always try to avoid the diagnosis of stomach cancer before the disease is diagnosed; after the diagnosis is confirmed, they avoid the disease and seek medical help. One doctor saw a patient and his family in the outpatient clinic who underwent surgery in a nearby health center after the diagnosis of gastric cancer. When asked about the reason, the family said it was because it was convenient to be close to home. There are also a considerable proportion of patients’ families who deliberately avoid the oncology hospital or professional medical group in order to conceal their disease from the patients, and do not allow the specialist to treat them. Progressive gastric cancer requires a comprehensive treatment based on surgery, emphasizing standard lymph node dissection. Among the comprehensive treatment methods for locally progressive gastric cancer, surgery is the most important, accounting for up to 90% of treatment. The quality of surgery determines the prognosis of patients. However, many patients believe that there is no special requirement for gastric cancer surgery, and any hospital with surgical condition can treat it, or they think that the treatment level of gastric cancer in well-known large hospitals must be high. As a result, only 1/5 of the nearly 500,000 new gastric cancer cases occurring in China every year have received standardized treatment. Radical lymph node dissection for gastric cancer is an operation with high professional and technical requirements. Statistics show that even in hospitals with high level of gastric cancer treatment in China, the difference in 5-year survival rate between gastric cancer patients operated by specialists and non-specialists is as high as 15%-30%: the 5-year survival rate for patients operated by specialists is 40%-60%, while the 5-year survival rate for patients treated by non-specialists is only 20%-30%. This means that patients spend the same amount of money on medicine but do not get the results they deserve. It is generally believed that a specialist should perform at least 50 gastric cancer surgeries per year, and a medical institution that has performed at least 150 gastric cancer surgeries in the past 3 years is qualified to treat gastric cancer. In addition, in the diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer, laparoscopic radical gastric cancer surgery is a mature technology in clinical application in recent years, and the initial clinical application of this technology is limited to the minimally invasive treatment of early gastric cancer. However, according to the actual situation in China, laparoscopic surgery for progressive gastric cancer has been carried out in several major centers in China and satisfactory results have been achieved. Patients should also choose to undergo laparoscopic surgery in experienced medical centers.