Background: Hepatic metastases of gastric cancer(HMGC) are an important factor affecting the prognosis of gastric cancer patients, and 3-14% of gastric cancer cases were diagnosed with synchronous hepatic metastases of gastric cancer (SHMGC). However, there remains much unidentified about the therapy effect of surgical resection on SHMGC. Here, we investigated the associations of surgical resection with the overall survival of SHMGC, which might develop more effective therapy strategies for patients of HMGC. Methods: Patients diagnosed with SHMGC from January 2010 to December 2015 were selected in the study. Kaplan-Meier analysis and multivariable analysis based on the Cox proportional hazards model were performed to compare the effects of surgical resection (including gastrectomy and metastasectomy) combined with chemotherapy (surgical resection group, SR group) and palliative chemotherapy (palliative chemotherapy group, PC group) on survival. Results: A total of 132 patients were enrolled in this study. Overall, 57 (43.2%) were treated with surgical resection/chemotherapy and 75 (56.8%) palliative chemotherapy. Overall survival (OS) was significantly prolonged in the SR group compared with the PC group (33.6 vs. 12.4 months, P < 0.001). In the SR group, the R0 resection (68.4%, 39/57) contributed to markedly prolonged OS compared with the non-R0 resection subgroup (45.1 vs. 13.5 months, P < 0.001). Surgical resection and single hepatic metastasis were independent predictors of OS in multivariate analysis with hazard ratio (HR) of 0.453 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.276-0.813, p = 0.009) and 0.540 (95%CI 0.315-0.796, p = 0.043), respectively. Conclusions: For patients with synchronous hepatic metastases of gastric cancer, radical surgical resection combined with appropriate chemotherapy may be more beneficial than palliative chemotherapy. Moreover, single hepatic metastasis might achieve better survival after aggressive surgical resection.