To investigate the predictive value of Prospero related homeobox protein 1 (PROX1) in the recurrence of early non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after minimally invasive resection.

54 patients with NSCLC who were admitted to the hospital from June 2016 to December 2018 to undergo minimally invasive resection were selected as the research objects. The expression of PROX1 in NSCLC tissues and corresponding adjacent tissues was detected by immunohistochemical staining. The recurrence of NSCLC patients was counted, and the clinical characteristics of relapsed patients and non relapsed patients were compared. The factors affecting postoperative recurrence of NSCLC patients were analyzed by logistic regression analysis. The PROX1 expression level in NSCLC cancer tissue was analyzed by receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) to predict the efficacy of postoperative recurrence.

the expression level of PROX1 in cancer tissues was higher than that in adjacent tissues (P<0.05), and the number of cases with high expression of PROX1 in cancer tissues was higher than that in adjacent tissues (P<0.05), 24 patients relapsed, and the recurrence rate was 25.53% (24/54). The number of cases with lymph node metastasis, high expression of PROX1 and TNM stage Ⅱ in the recurrent group was higher than that in the non recurrent group (P<0.05), Logistic regression analysis showed that high expression of PROX1, lymph node metastasis and TNM stage Ⅱ were independent risk factors for postoperative recurrence of NSCLC (P<0.05), ROC analysis showed that the best cutoff point for predicting postoperative recurrence of NSCLC patients by PROX1 expression level in cancer tissues was 8.36, the sensitivity was 84.78%, the specificity was 89.13%, and the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.930 (P<0.05).

the expression of PROX1 in cancer tissues of NSCLC patients is high, and the expression level of PROX1 protein is an independent risk factor for postoperative recurrence of NSCLC patients, which can be used as a sensitive index to predict postoperative recurrence of NSCLC patients.