Postoperative follow-up for gastric cancer needs to be individualized according to age, tumour recurrence pattern, and recurrence time.

Background: Few studies have reported the association between the pattern and time point of recurrence in different groups stratified by age in postoperative survival of patients with gastric cancer.

Methods: The clinicopathological data and recurrence data of 2028 patients with GC who underwent curative surgery from January 2010 to March 2015 were enrolled in this study. Patients were grouped according to age: young group (YG) (≤45 years old) (n = 180) and non-young group (OG) (>45 years old) (n = 1848).