ALK and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes: On a per patient basis, younger patients (49 ± 7 vs 58 ± 7, p = 0.002) and those who had never smoked (p = 0.018) were more frequently included in the ALK-positive group (n = 13) than in the ALK-negative group (n = 54), but no significant association was found with sex (p = 0.736), history of smoking (p = 1.000) or lymph node metastasis (p = 0.110) (Table 2).