ObjectiveTo investigate the impact of surgical treatment on the prognosis of patients with gastric signet-ring cell carcinoma (GSRC). MethodsThe clinicopathologic and prognosis data of patients pathologically diagnosed with GSRC from 2000 to 2019 were extracted from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. The Cox proportional hazards regression model was used to analyze the impact of surgery on overall survival (OS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) of patients with GSRC. ResultsA total of 3 457 patients with GSRC were included, including 2 048 cases in the operation group and 1 409 cases in the non-operation group. The propensity-score matching by a 1∶1 nearest neighbour algorithm was conducted to control for confounding baseline differences. There were 802 cases in the operation group and 802 cases in the non-operation group after matching. The OS and CSS curves drawn by Kaplan-Meier method of the operation group were better than those of the non-operation group (χ2=434.3 P<0.001; χ2=412.4, P<0.001). The multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analysis showed that the elderly (≥ 60 years old), late AJCC tumor stage (stage Ⅰ as reference), and patients with bone metastasis of GSRC increased the risk of shortening OS and CSS (P<0.05), while patients treated with surgery and chemotherapy decreased the risk of shortening OS and CSS (P<0.05). ConclusionAccording to the analysis results of SEER database in this study, surgical treatment is beneficial to improve the prognosis for patients with GSRC.