Figure 3

The overall survival (OS) of N1 hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with and without CK19 expression in regional lymph nodes (LN). The solid line represents the OS of CK19 (−) primary liver tumor with CK19(−) lymph node metastasis (LNM) and dashed line represents that of CK19(+) primary liver tumor with CK19(+) LNM. The horizontal axis was the survival in months and the vertical axis was the percentile cumulative survival. The median OS of patients with CK19(+) LNM and CK19(+) primary tumor was significantly poorer than those with CK19(−) LNM and CK19(−) primary tumor (P = 0.042). CK19 expression in metastatic LN was a poor prognostic factor for HCC with LNM.