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← Return to Onward with durable remission
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Prostate Cancer | Last Active: Jan 2 8:02pm | Replies (37)
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My oncologist offered to let me have the more sensitive test, but said that it takes two or three days because they have to send them out. It wouldn’t cost me any more. I get almost all my other blood test results within 2 hours, But the PSA test always takes till late in the afternoon or the next morning.
In my case undetectable is a temporary thing, eventually Nubeqa will fail and I will have to move to a PARP inhibitor. Getting A more sensitive test is just not much of a benefit to me, I need to be concerned when it is .1 or higher and how quickly it is moving.
For those that may be in remission, the test is more useful. It definitely gives confidence knowing the number is so small.
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That makes sense for you. I guess I'm just lucky to live 1 km from a hospital lab that can do uPSA (down to 0.01) in-house — it's a nice walk over every three months.
As far as I know so far, there's no significant evidence of PCa spreading while PSA remains undetectable on the ultrasensitive test, while (as you referenced) there is some evidence from 20–25 years ago of very rare cases of PCa spreading with PSA undetectable on the regular (less-sensitive) test.
Once PSA is detectable at all, even at very low levels, then we agree that the ultrasensitive test probably brings no extra benefit.