Background:It is well established thatretrieved lymph nodes (RLNs) count were positively correlated with better overall survival in gastric cancer (GC). But little is known about the relationship between RLNs count and short-term complications after radical surgery.Methods: A total of 1487 consecutive GC patients between January 2016 and December 2018 at Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital were retrospectively analyzed. Univariate analyses were performed to elucidate the association between RLNs count and postoperative complications. We further identified clinical factors that might affect the RLNs count.Results: Among all of the patients, postoperative complications occurred in 435 (29.3%) patients. The mean RLNs count was 25.1 and 864 (58.1%) patients were diagnosed with lymph node metastasis. Univariate analyses showed no significant difference between RLNscount and postoperative complications (both overall and stratified by CDC grade). We further explored that preoperative serum albumin, type of resection, operation time, tumor invasion, lymph node metastasis, and pTNM stage were associated with RLNs count.Conclusions: The current study demonstrated that RLNs count was not associated with postoperative short-term complications following gastrectomy of GC, which provided a rationale for the determination of a proper RLNs count of curative gastrectomy.