Fig. 4

The TNM staging system did not predict survival well in the 3 NSCLC cohorts. The TNM staging system is the main tool for predicting survival and determining the treatment strategies, but it did not predict survival well for patients with NSCLC. The Kaplan–Meier survival curves for OS and DFS of patients with stage I, II, or III NSCLC in a the discovery cohort (n = 194), b the validation cohort (n = 172), and c the independent cohort (n = 73) are shown