Objective: To investigate the clinicopathologic characteristics of the primary synchronous multiple gastric cancers (SMGC) in Chinese.Methods: Clinicopathologic data of patients with histologically confirmed gastric cancer who received surgical operations in our department between 1993 and 2002 were retrospectively collected and analyzed. Clinicopathologic characteristics including gender, age, tumor location, differentiation and staging between patients with SMGC and those with solitary gastric cancer (SGC) were compared. Synchronous multiple and solitary gastric cancers were diagnosed and classified based on radiography upper endoscopy and histology. All the cases were followed up after the operation and 5-year survival rate between the two groups was compared.Results: A total of 871 patients with gastric cancer were included. Synchronous multiple gastric cancers were found in 44 (5.1%) of these cases. More of the diagnose in the early stage to SMGC than to SGC. SMGC were more likely to be located at the lower third stomach and of a low grade differentiation, compared to SGC. However, there were no significant differences in the rates of lymph node metastasis and lymphatic vessel invasion between multiple and solitary gastric cancers. In addition, the 5-year survival rate did not difference between the two groups.Conclusion: The whole stomach should be detected carefully to avoid missing out the multiple gastric cancers. Concing the treatment of multiple gastric cancer, the sufficient extent of the stomach wall resection was necessary, and the extent of lymphadenectomy was supposed to follow the operation for the solitary gastric cancer according to the staging of the cancer lesions.