Fig. 5

The prognostic value of the combination of the 4-lnRNA signature and TNM stage in the 3 NSCLC cohorts. To improve the TNM staging system, the 4-lnRNA signature is combined with TNM stage to construct a new risk model for predicting survival in patients with NSCLC. According to the new risk score, patients were categorized into low-, medium-, and high-risk groups. Then Kaplan–Meier survival analysis was used to compare the OS and DFS of patients with low, medium, or high risk in a the discovery cohort, b the internal validation cohort, and c the independent validation cohort