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Monitoring PSA post surgery with Gleason 9

Prostate Cancer | Last Active: Apr 12 1:10pm | Replies (18)

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@kujhawk1978

Short answer, after surgery, at least for the first year, more likely two, you and your medical team will do labs and consults every three months. If it stays undetectable, then at two years your medical team may move to every six months and at some point, if it remains undetectable, say at five years, annually.

If I understand correctly, you have not had your surgery yet. If so, that pathology report and surgeon's notes may provide an answer on the way ahead labs and consults or adjuvant therapy.

It would also be useful to know which PSA test they use, standard, to a single decimal point, or ultrasensitive, to two decimal points. If the former, your results generally come back at < .1 which is "undetectable" and when you have two consecutive increases, say .2 then .3, taken three months apart, you have BCR and go from there. With the USPSA, that definition of BCR changes and the medical community is all over the map about when to act on those results.

So, if you're comfortable with your decision on surgery, my take is needless worry until after when you have clinical data, pathology report. surgeon's notes, labs...then you can discuss with your medical team any treatment decisions.

Kevin

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Replies to "Short answer, after surgery, at least for the first year, more likely two, you and your..."

Thanks @kujhawk1978 !
What you posted is almost exactly what my doctor just told me. “Stop worrying about follow up when you haven’t even had surgery yet”. But that’s what I do, I worry. Hard not to when we are in this situation. Thanks again Kevin!