Slight PSA rise 9 months after radiation.

Probably best to ask your oncology team. Everyone here is well-intentioned, and obviously we spend a lot of time reading about this new disease we have to live with, but you shouldn't worry too much about our amateur assessments of your test results. 🙂

Best wishes!

Always get your PSA Tested at the same lab . It's critical to compare apples to apples .
Different labs often have different results . Therefore you have no idea if your PSA is going up or down or is it just a different lab being used .

Even if it was 300.

The standard is that the PSA should drop to near undetectable, usually below .5 after radiation, much less 9 months after.

You should be speaking to a genito urinary oncologist about this. They specialize in prostate cancer and keep up with everything going on. A medical oncologist is not sufficient.

Your PSA is way too high after radiation, it implies there is something else going on.

Here is what the American Cancer Society website says:

❝The pattern of the drop in PSA after radiation therapy is also different from after surgery. PSA levels after radiation tend to drop slowly, and they might not reach their lowest level until 2 years or more after treatment.

❝… Some medical groups have proposed that if the PSA rises more than 2 ng/mL above the lowest level reached, further treatment should be considered, but some doctors might advise tests to look for cancer in the body even if the PSA has not yet risen this much.❞

So definitely talk to your medical team about any concerns, but what you're seeing only 9 months after radiation is consistent with what the Cancer Society seems to consider normal (even if some people in the forum had much faster drops; we all respond differently.)
https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/prostate-cancer/treating/psa-levels-after-treatment.html#after-radiation-therapy

Being active with prostate cancer webinars I’ve heard from dozens of people that have had radiation and have had their PSA drop below 1 quickly. Sticking above three seems to imply that there’s something else going on.

Ancan.org has advanced prostate cancer meetings for two hours every week. Go in there and tell him that 3.57-3.75 is a normal PSA for somebody 9 months after radiation. Their 10+ years of experience with hundreds of people will concur that something else seems to be going on.

@jeffmarc It's great to share personal experience (e.g. "the people in my support group all had bigger drops than that, sooner"), but please don't make definite pronouncements based on a small set of anecdotal evidence, especially if it might cause someone unnecessary worry and alarm at what's already a difficult time. Most of us here aren't oncologists, and no one here is in a position to analyse test results and give a diagnosis for someone who's not their patient; all we can do is suggest questions for them to ask their medical teams.

@giordi Try not to let it worry until you've talked to your oncologist, who will consider your test results together with your other medical information and then work out a plan with you (which might just be "nothing to worry about, stay the course and we'll see where it is in 3 more months").

I appreciate your feedback, and thanks for the encouragement.

I will check them out, thanks!

Thanks for the link, that was helpful info!

Not the news I wanted to hear but thanks anyway. Every bit of info can be put to use.