Interestingly, if K-Ras mutations diagnosed by direct sequencing appeared to be a prognostic marker of poorer outcome in our cohort of surgically treated NSCLC patients, this tendency is not more observed when we considered K-Ras mutations diagnosed by the two other techniques (hybridisation probe alone, or with clamped-PCR). The gene discussed is KRAS; the disease is non-small cell lung carcinoma.