OBJECTIVE To investigate the clinical value of hepatoma-specific alpha-fetoprotein (HS-AFP) and gamma-glutamyltransferase Ⅱ (GGT Ⅱ) for judgment of postoperative prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).METHODS HS-AFP was separated and determined using native polyacrylamide electrophoresis with a discontinuous buffer system and West blots. GGT Ⅱ was separated with native polyacrylamide electrophoresis with a discontinuous buffer system and detected by enzyme staining. Forty cases with HCC underwent serial determination of HS-AFP and GGT Ⅱ before and after radical excision. The correlations were analyzed between the two indices and survival time.RESULTS In the 40 cases with HCC, before radical excision the positive rates of HS-AFP and GGT Ⅱ were 57.5% and 67.5% respectively, with the positive rate of combined HS-AFP and GGT Ⅱ reaching 80.0%. After operation, the recurrence and metastasis rate in the groups with positive HS-AFP and GGT Ⅱ were 90.9% and 58.8% respectively, while in the groups with negative HS-AFP and GGT Ⅱ the rates were 20.7% and 26.1% respectively. Recurrence and metastasis occurred in all cases with both postoperative positive HS-AFP and GGT Ⅱ but only in 9.5% of the cases in whom both postoperative HS-AFP and GGT Ⅱ were negative. Univariate analysis revealed that postoperative HS-AFP and GGT Ⅱ were related to the prognosis in HCC.CONCLUSION Postoperative serum HS-AFP and GGT Ⅱ are very useful in predicting the prognosis of HCC patients.