Expression profile comparisons of the five selected miRNAs between 31 distant metastases patients and 27 disease-free patients in the training set by the Mann–Whitney U test.

CT: the threshold cycle to detect fluorescence; ΔCT = CTmiRNA−CTU6, ΔΔCT = ΔCTpoor prognosis−ΔCTgood prognosis. Patients who developed distant metastasis as first event within 5 years after removal of the primary tumor were considered to have poor prognosis, whereas patients who remained disease free for a minimum of 5 years were defined as having good prognosis. Fold change represented the miRNA expression level of poor prognosis group versus good prognosis group, and was calculated using the equation RQ = 2−ΔΔCT[28].