Colorectal cancer has an extremely poor prognosis due to its high rate of recurrence and metastasis. The present study aimed to investigate the correlations between the B7-H1 and B7-H4 expressions as well as the clinicopathological characteristics and the prognosis of patients with colorectal cancer. We further inferred from these findings whether T lymphocyte co-inhibitory molecules (B7-H1 and B7-H4) led to a poor prognosis in Heilongjiang patients with colorectal cancer. Survival analysis revealed that the poor prognosis of these patients was unrelated to patient age, tumor size or histological grade, or lymph node metastasis, but was associated with TNM stage, high B7-H1 and B7-H4 expression levels. High B7-H1 and B7-H4 expressions were closely correlated with poor prognosis in patients with colorectal cancer. We speculate that the joint detection of these molecules may clinically apply for diagnosing and predicting poor prognosis of patients with colorectal cancer in northeast China's Heilongjiang province. In addition, intervention of B7-H1 and B7-H4 may be beneficial for enhancement of immunity in these patients.