The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of the degree of nodal involvement (extracapsular vs intracapsular) on survival of 121 patients radically resected for gastric adenocarcinoma with nodal metastases at the Department of Clinica Chirurgica I of "La Sapienza" University of Rome. Patients with extracapsular nodal metastases had a worse 10-year survival rate than those with intracapsular nodal involvement (7.9% vs 22.4%). A better prognosis among patients with intracapsular node metastases was observed in each p-TN subgroup. In the multifactorial analysis (3-way ANOVA) survival was correlated with the depth of invasion of the gastric wall and the degree of lymphnode involvement (p less than 0.01) but not with the level of nodal involvement (N1 vs N2). Our results suggest that the degree of nodal involvement is an important independent prognostic factor that should be considered in the current staging system for curative resection in gastric carcinoma.