BACKGROUND The long-term effect of anatomic resection (AR) is better than that of nonanatomic resection (NAR). At present, there is no study on microvascular invasion (MVI) and liver resection types. AIM To explore whether AR improves long-term survival in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by removing the peritumoral MVI. METHODS A total of 217 patients diagnosed with HCC were enrolled in the study. The surgical margin was routinely measured. According to the stratification of different tumor diameters, patients were divided into the following groups: <= 2 cm group, 2-5 cm group, and > 5 cm group. RESULTS In the 2-5 cm diameter group, the overall survival (OS) of MVI positive patients was significantly better than that of MVI negative patients (P = 0.031). For the MVI positive patients, there was a statistically significant difference between AR and NAR (P = 0.027). AR leads to a wider surgical margin than NAR (2.0 +/- 2.3 cm vs 0.7 +/- 0.5 cm, P < 0.001). In the groups with tumor diameters < 2 cm, both AR and NAR can obtain a wide surgical margin, and the surgical margins of AR are wider than that of NAR (3.5 +/- 5.8 cm vs 1.6 +/- 0.5 cm, P = 0.048). In the groups with tumor diameters > 5 cm, both AR and NAR fail to obtain wide surgical margin (0.6 +/- 1.0 cm vs 0.7 +/- 0.4 cm, P = 0.491). CONCLUSION For patients with a tumor diameter of 2-5 cm, AR can achieve the removal of peritumoral MVI by obtaining a wide incision margin, reduce postoperative recurrence, and improve prognosis.