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PSA 0.06 at one year post RARP

Prostate Cancer | Last Active: 4 days ago | Replies (20)

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@topf Oh, that may be good news for you. I once did a normal PSA test (Quest) and an ultra sensitive PSA test (Labcorp) on the same day (back-to-back blood draws at adjacent facilities). Quest yielded 0.11 and Labcorp yielded 0.097. Close, but not the same. My experience has been that at low values (around 0.1 or less), small PSA variations are normal, and can cause a lot of alarm that usually proves to be clinically insignificant “psa anxiety”.

Footnote: for ten years after my prostectomy, my doc only did normal PSA tests. Results always came back as undetectable (<0.1) until June 2025 when my PSA hit 0.11. I was a happy camper for those ten years and never gave things a second thought. If I had been doing usPSA tests for those ten years, I may well have been one rolling ball of PSA anxiety. I’m glad I had those ten “carefree” years, but I’m also glad I stayed on top of my PSA and caught the relapse at “first light”.

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Replies to "@topf Oh, that may be good news for you. I once did a normal PSA test..."

@melvinw Back in December Quest, for some reason, sent both, normal and uPSA test results. The uPSA was <0.02 the normsl one said 0.04 (not <0.04). I don’t know why they report the normal one down to such a low level when assay noise can be larger than the psa value.