ETV4 and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes: Table 1 shows a summary of the clinical characteristics of PTC patients. No substantial differences in the association were found between ETV4 expression and age, sex, and T classification. However, we identified that a higher ETV4 expression level was associated with lymph node metastasis, recurrence, distant metastasis, and the TNM stage (P < 0.05). Additionally, we found out that PTC patients with elevated levels of ETV4 had a shorter recurrence-free survival time than those with low ETV4 expression (log-rank test, P < 0.05, Figure 5C).