Active surveillance - biopsy results

Nice to meet you here. On diagnosis you kept your cool and didn't jump at hard core treatment, didn't over-react. Nor did I. Do you do anything supplementary like changing diet, food additives or so? Please report.
Best wishes to you.
Reinardo
Current age 78

Hi all - I also considered active surveillance after my first biopsy results (3 of 10 cores positive, Gleason 3+3, PSA 3.5, 10% involvement in one core, and less than 5% involvement in the other two cores). My uro/surgeon referred me to the following article , by Klotz, which listed "criteria" to be placed under active surveillance. After seeing the results of the first biopsy, the doctor thought it prudent to do a second biopsy just to be sure the cancer was not more wide spread (afterall, they are shooting in the dark). The second biopsy came up with 5/10 positive cores, with some with as much as 40% involvement. This put me out of the criteria that Klotz defined for success with active surveillance.

Best of luck to you, and may those PSAs stay static for many years to come.[url]

Reinardo:

I did not change any of my habits - I was already execising daily and eating a low fat diet. My only vice is red wine and I am not willing to give that up.

Mr Gimpy:

I am not certain what the 2% figure is referring to - I assumed it was the amount of cancer seen as a percentage of the tissue in the 10 cores taken.

Profman:

Thanks for your comments. Being under diagnosed is a risk all take with AS. The odds are in one's favor with the right profile but there are no guarantees. I am glad you caught your more serious situation. I am hopefull to be in the majority with indolent cancer.

Regards

I know the cancer will not go away on it's owm and is ever present in my body. The thinking is that with indolent cancer it may never progress to threaten one's life. Until something chages either with PSA results or changed diagnoses on repeat biopsy we will continue to monitor..

Hello and "welcome" we are interested, please keep us posted.

CareBear

*Optimist* said...
I did not change any of my habits - I was already execising daily and eating a low fat diet. My only vice is red wine and I am not willing to give that up.

Optimist,

Thanks for your posting, and congratulations to you.  I am thrilled to hear of more AS success!  I'm sure that we will continue to hear of more and more over time as indolant and aggressive PC characteristics become more widely known, understood and accepted.  While not everyone is diagnosed while in the very early stages appropriate for AS, there is a very large number who are...and with more success stories out there, more will  likely turn with increasing confidence to AS as a "treatment deferal strategy."  I just wanted to comment and to wish you the very best!

Regarding your red wine "vice"...there, again, keep up the good cancer-fighting work!  Studies (still in their early stages) are showing that the red wine antioxidant properties lessen the progression of PC once it occurs...pomegranate juice also being shown to do the same. 

[By the way, to proactively head-off any possible nay-sayers on the wine studies, it should be noted that other less prominant studies have shown no correlation; but, NONE have shown increased risk of cancer progression.  So, you are putting the odds in your favor by continuing to enjoy a glass or two per day.]

best regards...

 

edited wording for added clarity

Post Edited (Casey59) : 2/8/2010 4:29:58 PM (GMT-7)