Notably, in the present work we used our clinical sample cohort to clearly demonstrate that low expression of pro-SFTPB in NSCLC tissue compared to adjacent tissues correlates significantly with recurrence and poor prognosis in early-stage NSCLC patients, suggesting that low expression of pro-SFTPB in cancer tissue compared to adjacent tissue has potential as a predictor of recurrence and poor prognosis in early-stage NSCLC. Here, SFTPB is linked to non-small cell lung carcinoma.