Objective：To construct a modified lymph node ratio（mLNR）by combining the lymph node ratio（LNR）with central lymph node（CnLN）metastasis，and to investigate the impact of this indicator on the prognosis of gastric cancer patients. Methods：Chisquare analysis was performed to compare the differences between groups of gastric cancer patients with and without CnLN metastasis. Cox regression analysis was performed to identify factors affecting the survival of gastric cancer patients，receiver operating characteristic（ROC）curve was constructed to determine the cut - off value of LNR classification. Kaplan -Meier curve was drawn to visualize the survival of gastric cancer patients，and a nomogram was constructed to predict the survival prognosis of gastric cancer patients. Results：Type of gastrectomy（P=0.042），tumor size（P=0.043），degree of differentiation（P=0.001），vascular invasion（P ＜ 0.001），neural invasion（P ＜ 0.001），T stage（P=0.001），N stage（P ＜ 0.001），carcinoembryonic antigen（CEA）（P=0.002），and carbohydrate antigen 199（CA199）（P=0.026）were significantly different between the two groups. Both LNR and CnLNs were able to distinguish the survival of gastric cancer patients，but the distinguishing power of LNR was significantly stronger than that of CnLN. In addition，mLNR could effectively predict the survival of patients with gastric cancer and was identified as an independent risk factor affecting their survival. Conclusion：mLNR，constructed using CnLN，is an independent risk factor affecting the survival of gastric cancer patients and has the potential to serve as a new indicator for prognosis discrimination in gastric cancer patients.