In Reply: Our report was a brief update of an extensive validation of the molecular assay that was focused on patients with T1a node-negative cancer.1 The assay had been documented previously to discriminate not only overall mortality but also lung cancer–specific mortality in a large Kaiser population.
As in the larger group, an approximately 30% separation in lung cancer–specific survival was observed among the T1a node-negative subgroup, similar to the separation in overall mortality, with 5-year lung cancer–specific survival of 92.9% (95% CI, 79.6%-97.7%), 79.8% (95% CI, 64.5%-89.0%), and 65.0% (95% CI, 48.8%-72.3%) in low-, intermediate-, and high-risk patients, respectively (P = .001).