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Getting PSA results with impossible fluctuation: What's up?
Prostate Cancer | Last Active: Mar 11 8:47pm | Replies (46)Comment receiving replies
@harryo54 Actually, PSA testing shouldn’t be a controversial test - but too many people don’t understand it.
A PSA test isn’t a cancer test. The PSA number itself is similar to a “check engine” light in a car; it indicates that something may be wrong, and further checks should be made “under the hood.” Might be as simple as a UTI; might be BPH; might be more serious, such as cancer. Just need to have further checks. No need to panic, or rush to a quick treatment decision, or get overly concerned. Once the nearly dozen other things that might cause PSA to rise have been ruled out, only then should the possibility of prostate cancer be looked into.
Too many guys panic when they have an elevated PSA, think the “c”-word, and jump to radical treatment. That’s why in 2012, the USPSTF recommended against routine annual PSA screening in an attempt to try and stop the insanity: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/recommendation/prostate-cancer-screening-2012
Replies to "@harryo54 Actually, PSA testing shouldn’t be a controversial test - but too many people don’t understand..."
@brianjarvis
I was having dinner with one of my wife’s best friends and her husband. He is 90 she is 77. We had talked 16 years ago when I was having my prostate cancer surgery. He was talking about the fact that he had a prostatectomy as well, But didn’t mention that it was nine years before. He is an OB/GYN, who just retired at 89.
25 years ago he was told he had prostate cancer because he had a 3+3 Gleason score. Because he was a physician, he wanted the best surgeon in the country to do his prostatectomy. Turns out his prostate was almost 200 cc. He found a surgeon At Johns Hopkins that said he would do nerve sparing. He was an innovator in the technique. He went there to have his surgery and it was a fiasco. Nerve sparing was not done, and he thinks that the surgery was done by a trainee. When he asked to see the medical report on the surgical procedure, he received a report that was about a half a page long. As a doctor, he’s familiar with having reports that are 10 pages covering every single step of the surgery. To say he is furious, would put it mildly. After surgery, they biopsied his prostate and found out he was only a 3+2 something I’ve never heard of.. They should’ve never touched him. This kind of treatment is what led to the ending of PSA testing.
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@brianjarvis When you read that study, you really have to wonder where those conclusions came from:
There was only ONE man in 1000 screened who benefitted from PSA screening 14 yrs after diagnosis…
I think we know that numbers can be ‘massaged’ to fit a certain outcome but this was a real fiasco.
I, too, was one of those men who read this flawed study and stopped my testing for a full year; don’t know if it would have made a difference in my case but I am sure it did - for the worse - in many others. Thanks for the article!
Phil