Objectives: To describe clinical characteristics and explore the relationships among histopathology, cancer cell differentiation, regional lymph node metastasis, and distant metastasis in patients with rectal cancer. Subjects and methods: This is a retrospective study conducted in 75 rectal cancer patients at No.108 Military Central Hospital from 1/2010 to 7/2014. Results: The mean age was 58.1 +/- 9.7 years old. The ratio between male and female was 2.5:1. The prevalence of tumor, which was in the upper, middle or lower one-third part of the rectal, was 28 percent, 40 percent and 32 percent, respectively. Common signs and symptoms of rectal cancer were bloody stool (72 percent), abdominal pain (57.3 percent), and weight loss (52 percent). The rate of lymph node metastasis was 30.7 percent and of distant metastasis was 20 percent. The majority of the sample has medium differentiated adenocarcinoma (63.2 percent) and the prevalence of Mucinous carcinoma was only 9.2 percent. 47 percent patients of stage 13 and 82.7 percent of stage T4 had lymph node metastasis (p0.05). Patients with poorly differentiated carcinoma had the highest rate of lymph node and distant metastasis, which were 83.3 percent and 66.7 percent, respectively. Such prevalence of medium differentiated adenocarcinoma were 32.5 percent and 16.3 percent whereas of high differentiated tumor were 15.4 percent and 7.7 percent.