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@danmoriarty

Only one area of the 12 biopsies has gleason score of 4+3/PTI 5%
Psa is 6.12. Age 59. Anyone have experience with focal therapy? How do i read this?

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Replies to "Only one area of the 12 biopsies has gleason score of 4+3/PTI 5% Psa is 6.12...."

First, that is a very nice graph. I like the way it presents the data. I'm sure you also have a narrative description, which may have additional detail. This is one of those things where some people would rather you hear it from the urologist as no one wants to be the bearer of bad news.
It was test results somewhat like this that lead to me being told I was not a candidate for focal therapies. [Focal therapies are targeted destruction of cancer nodules. There are various ways of doing this destruction, including targeted radiation, freezing, and heating.]
First, you have noticeable levels of cancer in multiple regions of the prostate. Second, you have a 4+3. That means the "4" grade cells were more common in one or more biopsies there than the "3" grade cells. Anything less than a 3 is not scored and they can be 3,4, or 5 depending on how abnormal the cells look.
Also, a low PSA with significant cancer is not considered a positive. For whatever reason, this can be associated with faster growing cancer.
So now I've told you what you perhaps didn't want to hear and perhaps more than you wanted to hear, but the good news is that I'm not a doctor, I have not even seen your complete case notes, and I may be completely and utterly wrong.
May God give you a peace beyond yourself and provide a way forward whatever your journey yet holds. It's been about 18 months since I got results from my MRI-guided transperineal biopsies with 20 cores that found 4+3 in one nodule. I had a radical prostatectomy about a month later.

Here is a good website to compare your odds of cure for the major treatment paths. You have to determine your stage, low risk, intermediate, or high risk (risk of recurrence). So if you are intermediate, pull up the intermediate chart and you can see your odds of 10-20 yr survival, etc. based on the treatment you pick.
https://www.prostatecancerfree.org/compare-prostate-cancer-treatments/
It is best viewed on computer or just print it on paper. Not so viewable on phone.

To make the graphs easier to read, i drew a dot on the endpoints of the elipses, and then drew a line through the dots. This turns the elipses into lines.

Also, that was 12 tiny needles.
Don’t assume you have one small speck of cancer.
Its just not possible to know with only 12 cores.
Alot of men have multiple negative biopsies and eventually strike PCa later

Focal therapy seems a good goal. The problem with the whole field is the most drastic treatments are almost always advised, regardless if you need focal or intermediate type treatment. It is like they mandatorially make everyone get advised the most serious treatments, the most serious surgery, the most serious radiation. Then they leave it up to you alone to find anything focal or intermediate, or basically anything less than the most serious treatments. Dr Woodrum, interventional radiology at Mayo does some more focal treatments. He can do some intermediate type treatments too, but he is been sort of mandated by research protocol/funding of this for mostly just focal. Outside Mayo there are a small group of doctors doing focal and intermediate type treatments because there is much that has to be cash paid and Medicare codes are not in just yet for many of them, though we hear it is coming. Mayo is top notch for advanced stuff. Good luck.

Hi Dan, I moved your question to this existing discussion:
- Any experiences with HIFU localized ablation for prostate cancer?
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/hifu-localized-ablation-for-prostate-cancer-e-g-at-stanford-med/
I did this so you can read previous posts and connect with members like @josgen @imbimbo @poodledoc @semeon @cupman @azdave in addition to the helpful responses from @spino @grounghogy and @bjroc.

Dan, have you decided on treatment?