Objective To explore the clinicopathological characteristics which were associated with lymph node metastases in early gastric cancer patients. Methods Clinical data of 187 early gastric cancer patients who received surgical treatment in The Second People’s Hospital of Jiaozuo between January 2009 and January 2016, were retrospectively analyzed, and then exploring the clinicopathological characteristics which were associated with lymph node metastases in early gastric cancer, including age, gender, tumor location, diameter of tumor, number of tumor, depth of invasion, macroscopic type, histological type, venous invasion, and local ulcer. Results In this study, 187 patients with early gastric cancer were included, and lymph node metastasis was detected in 32 patients (17.1%). Results of multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that, lymph node metastasis was significantly closely related with diameter of tumor (OR=2.080,P=0.022), depth of invasion (OR=21.048,P=0.001), histological type (OR=3.507,P=0.018), venous invasion (OR=2.406,P=0.009), and local ulcer (OR=2.738,P=0.001), patients with diameter of tumor larger than 2 cm, infiltration depth of submucosa, histological types of undifferentiated type, vascular infiltration, and local ulcer had higher lymph node metastasis rate. Conclusion The clinicopathological characteristics, including diameter of tumor, depth of invasion, histological type, venous invasion, and local ulcer are risk factors for lymph node metastasis of early gastric cancer patients, which should be paid high attention.