Background: Benefit of quality of life made laparoscopic gastric cancer surgery attractive, but there are still concerns about laparoscopic lymph node dissection. The aim of this study was to evaluate a feasibility of laparoscopy-assisted distal gastrectomy (LADG) with D2 lymph node dissection compared with open distal gastrectomy (ODG) for advanced gastric cancer (AGC). Methods: Patients with cT2-T4a and cN0-2 (AJCC 7^th staging system) distal gastric cancer were randomly assigned to LADG or ODG. The primary endpoint was the non-compliance rate of the lymph node dissection defined as rate of cases where there was more than one missing lymph node station according to the guidelines of the Japanese Research Society for Gastric Cancer lymph node grouping. Secondary endpoints were perioperative complications, changes of inflammatory and immunological parameters, postoperative hospital stay, and 3 year disease free survival. This trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov as NCT01088204. Results: Between Jun 2010 and Oct 2011,204 patients were randomly allocated and underwent either LADG (n=105) or ODG (n=99). 8 patients were excluded in the intention to treatment analysis because of protocol violation and patient’s withdrawal of permission, and finally 100 patients in LADG and 95 patients in ODG were analyzed. There were no significant differences of overall non-compliance rate of lymph node dissection between LADG and ODG groups; they were respectively 47.0% and 43.2%. (p=0.648). In the subgroup analysis according to the stratified risk groups, non-compliance rate in LADG was significantly higher than ODG (52.0% vs. 25.0%, p=0.043) for clinical stage III but it was not significantly different for stage II (46.2% vs. 48.9%, p=0.788). Intraoperative event rate was not significantly different between groups (LADG;6.0% and ODG;4.2%, p =0.748). Complications rate in early postoperative period up to 1 month was also not different between groups (LADG;17.0 %, ODG;18.8%, p=0.749). Conclusions: LADG was feasible in AGC compared with ODG, especially in clinical stage II in terms of non-compliance rate of D2 lymph node dissection and perioperative complications. Clinical trial information: NCT01088204.