Fig. 1: Overview of the study.

OLM occult lymph node metastasis, OLMN occult lymph node metastasis negative, OLMP occult lymph node metastasis positive, cN0 clinical N0, LUAD lung adenocarcinoma, TCGA The Cancer Genome Atlas, WGCNA weighted gene co-expression network analysis, IHC immunohistochemistry, RT-qPCR reverse transcription and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction.