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PSMA Pet scan interputation
My PSMA Pet scan was complete and showed no signs of cancer outside my prostate. There was illumination in the prostate, and reported as multiple radiotracer foci in the prostate. The urologist didn't find this information useful in determing the amount of cancer in the prostate, his only focus was outside the prostate. Why is the focus of the PSMA pet scan only for cancer outside the prostate, and why not as an indication for quantity of cancer within the prostate?
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Once cancer has been found inside the prostate, the chief treatment issues are
1) how best to eradicate it in the confines of the prostate itself; and
2) did any get out or is likely to have done so.
That 2nd one is what rightly most concerns your doc.
If the cancer is prostate confined they can snuff it there,
If it's out and about, they still have to nail it in the prostate but they also then have to hunt to kill it to wherever it's gone in your body.
Thanks for the input. It all makes sense, however my hope was to use the information from the PET Scan to make a better decision on treatment. If a biopsy needle is only 1.2 mm, and the entire area of a prostate around 250 mm, then it is difficult to determine the amount of cancer in the prostate from say 30 needle biopsies. Especially if you only have one needle biopsy that was a 3+4, and the 4 only represented < 5% of the sample. I would have liked to put a value on the amount cancer present through the illumination of cancer in the prostate from the PET Scan. I am unable to do that. I did see comments related to SUVMax score while I will ask about.