As shown in Table 2, disease free survival was significantly lower in patients with positive lymph-vascular invasion (p = 0.022, Fig. 3a), T stage III/IV (p < 0.001, Fig. 3b), AJCC tumor staging III/IV (p < 0.001, Fig. 3c) and MK expression (p < 0.001, Fig. 3d). Here, MDK is linked to neoplasm.