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← Return to PET Scan or not yet?
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I know Jeff, I do not know if people are actually reading studies ?
This subject is not about "opinions" or "anxiety", it is about multiple studies done over the years that continually proved one and the same thing over and over again - salvage before uPSA reaches 0.25 gives significantly better results, it is not even a question.
ADT - most people here had either short or long term ADT and most are doing just fine, some had zero SA during short term ADT and besides, what has to be done has to be done.
By the same token one can argue that no treatment should be done at all in any stage since treatments effect "quality of life" ?
If one has indolent cancer and a luxury of "observing" it over the years inching from 0.10 to 0.11 in a year , than of course - go for it !
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@surftohealth88
Quality of life is pretty significant. ADT is no walk in the park and that is why you are seeing a push to reduce the months on it. As said earlier this is about one’s individual cancer circumstances. A publicized Scandinavian study out of Denmark published in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine noted that researchers tracked nationwide, data collected over an eight-year period (2015 to 2023) to see if getting a PSMA-PET scan before salvage radiotherapy (sRT) actually translated to longer life. The study confirmed that men who received a PSMA-PET scan before radiation had a statistically significant improvement in overall survival (OS) compared to those who did not. Researchers evaluated 844 patients across Denmark facing biochemical recurrence after surgery. They compared patients who had a pretreatment PSMA-PET scan against those who did not.5-Year Overall Survival: The overall survival rate at 5 years was 98.1% for the PSMA-PET group versus 93.8% for the non-PSMA group.Reduced Mortality Risk: Patients who skipped the advanced scan and went straight to conventional salvage therapy had a 3.3 times higher risk of death during the follow-up period Recurrence-Free Benefit: The 3-year biochemical recurrence-free survival was also superior (74.9% with PSMA-PET vs. 69.4% without).Why the Scan Improved SurvivalAs noted by lead author Anna Mogensen from Aalborg University Hospital, the data suggests that PSMA-PET allows doctors to meticulously select the right patients for local radiation. If the scan reveals the cancer has already jumped to distant bones, doctors can pivot to systemic treatments, saving the patient from ineffective localized radiation while aggressively targeting the actual spots. Critics will argue this is just a small study, but the anecdotal evidence and preliminary studies are pointing this way. Since PSMA-PET is recent when looking long term, critics will also argue it is to soon to know. Personally having participated in clinical trials i know the benefit when looking at preliminary results and deciding whether to go forward as it is up to each patient to decide their course. The NCCU guidelines are guidelines based on prior studies, but before NCCU guidelines begin to account for a real change in their guidelines their has always been evidence pointing in that direction years before an actual change is made.