Survival analysis

All patients with HCC were allocated with a risk score according to the prognostic risk model formula, then the median value of the risk scores was employed as the cutoff. Patients with a risk score higher than the median value were considered the high-risk group and patients with a risk score lower than the median value were considered the low-risk group. We then compared the mortality rates of the two groups by R survival (16) and limma packages (17). Univariate survival analysis was performed for each of the key genes within the prognostic model. The median expression level was used to divide the patients into high- and low-expression groups.