This is even more important in the light of a fairly poor clinical lymph node staging.29,30,35 In contrast to patients with localised tumour stages, individuals with positive resection margins (R1) or distant metastases (M1) showed no decrease in SEPT9 or SHOX2 methylation after surgical resection, probably due to the residual tumour burden. The gene discussed is SHOX2; the disease is neoplasm.