Despite these limitations, our findings suggest the need for larger studies to assess the relationships between lateral neck node metastasis and/or gender with clinical recurrence in patients with PTMC.
Similarly, the correlation between the protein expression patterns and clinicopathological features of OSCC, including tumor stage, neck node metastasis, and histological grade, was also analyzed using the chi-squared test.
Central neck node metastasis with or without lateral neck node metastasis was confirmed in 24 pN1b and 68 patientsients.
Weak or negative NANOG expression was associated with negative neck node metastasis, whereas higher NANOG expression was not associated with positive neck node metastasis in the present study.
In the analysis of neck node metastasis, weak or negative expression of NANOG was significantly related to negative neck node metastasis in OSCCs (p = 0.005) (Fig. 4b).
Patients with OSCC and positive neck node metastasis displayed a significantly poorer survival rate than those with negative neck node metastasis (p < 0.01, Fig. 5b).
During follow-up, seven patients in this wait-and-see group developed a neck node metastasis.
Recently, however, pathologically confirmed lateral neck metastasis, not central neck node metastasis, was reported to be a strong predictor of relapse in PTMC patients [ 12, 13].
Only the group with weak CD44 expression displayed a statistically higher frequency of negative neck node metastasis (Fig. 4b).
Late tumor stage, positive neck node metastasis, and high-grade differentiation were associated with significantly poorer survival rates.
