PurposeThis study was designed to evaluate the patterns and predictors of recurrence in patients who underwent laparoscopic resection of rectal cancer.MethodsPatients with rectal cancer receiving laparoscopic resection between April 2009 and March 2016 were retrospectively analyzed. The association of recurrence with clinicopathological characteristics was evaluated using multivariate analyses.ResultsA total of 405 consecutive patients were included in our study. Within a median follow-up time of 62 months, 77 patients (19.0%) experienced disease recurrence: 10 (2.5%) had locoregional recurrence (LR), 61 (15.1%) had distant metastasis (DM), and 6 (1.5%) developed LR and DM synchronously. The lung was the most common site of metastasis. Multivariate analyses indicated that involved circumferential resection margin (CRM) was the only independent predictor for LR (OR=13.708, 95% CI 3.478-54.026, P