Therefore, we demarcated the patients according to AKR1B10 expression levels, and found that the survival of AKR1B10neg patients was significantly worse compared to the AKR1B10pos group (P < 0.05; Figure 1F–1G, Supplementary Figure 1C), regardless of age, gender, tumor size, tumor location, venous invasion, neural invasion and lymph node metastasis. This evidence concerns the gene AKR1B10 and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes.