How many cores?

Posted by justme129 @justme129, 5 hours ago

I’m 60 years old, and I have a pirads 4 lesion in my prostate. It wasn’t there 18 months ago. Other than the lesion, I have no symptoms and my PSA is normal at 1.36. I also have prostatis, and my prostate volume is on the upper side of normal in size. I had a biopsy at a NCI , and the doctor only took 1 core from the lesion. I am really upset. He did do the standard 12 core biopsy as well, but to only take one core from a pirads 4 lesion seems very wrong. Any feedback? The pathology has not come back yet, but even if it’s all benign, I am scared to death that something was missed due to the under sampling.

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surftohealth88 | @surftohealth88 | 5 hours ago

That is highly unusual. My husband's urologist ( who is far from being good) took 12 plus extra 4 cores from the lesion itself. Since your PSA is low if all cores come back as benign it is highly unlikely that he missed something extremely different in that one core. IF however that one core comes back with 3+3 - make sure that you have MRI every year and biopsy repeated in 2 years latest, and of course - watch your PSA.
Wishing you the best of luck 🍀

jeff Marchi | @jeffmarc | 4 hours ago

You are correct only doing one core from that PIRADS-4 lesion Is quite unusual. Usually, they take at least three from that spot. Hopefully, he found some other spots that are equally useful to find out what’s going on?

Come back and tell us what the biopsy found. Posting the full biopsy in this forum really gives us some information from which we can give you non-medical doctor opinions, from our experience, seeing many other biopsies. We can discuss how treatment proceeded for other others with similar results. Just gives you information with which you can talk to your doctor.

topf | @topf | 4 hours ago

There are people who think that random biopsies are unnecessarily risky and one should do them only targeted. Mark Scholz made that case in one of his videos. A PSA of 1.36 with prostatitis sounds very low to me, I would not be too worried.