Abstract: Objective To study the effect of lymph node metastasis on prognosis of progressive colorectal cancer. Methods Clinical data about 181 colorectal cancer patients who underwent radical operation in our hospital from January 2007 to January 2012 were retrospectively analyzed. Results The patients were divided into low lymph node metastasis (＜ 0.17) group (n=96) and high lymph node metastasis (≥0.17) group (n=85). The 1- and 5-year overall survival (OS) rates were higher and the 3-year OS rate was lower in low lymph node metastasis group than in high lymph node metastasis group (97.9% vs 87.1%、88.8% vs 61.0%、69.6% vs 43.9%, P＜ 0.05). Multivariate regression analysis showed that the number of detected lymph nodes and lymph node metastasis were the independent factors for the prognosis of colorectal cancer. Stratifcation analysis revealed that the effect of lymph node metastasis on the prognosis of colorectal cancer was independent of the number of detected lymph nodes. Conclusion Lymph node metastasis is an independent factor for the prognosis of colorectal cancer, and can thus be used as an important supplement indication for staging colorectal cancer and judging its prognosis.