PSA Jump

Had HIFU treatment in August 2012.  PSAs every two-three months have been 0.01.  Today my results came back 0.02....Nervous.

aviatonprin,

Did you have whole gland HIFU ablation or focal HIFU on just the tumor?

- Allen

If it were focal, there's a possibility of retreatment. But I agree that it's too soon to react. Does whole-gland HIFU bounce like radiation does? I think they often use nadir+2 as the biochemical recurrence threshold for it, but there's no real validation data.

No. I'm just saying that if you had a BCR with focal HIFU, they could treat the just the site of recurrence, which might not be so bad. With BCR of whole gland, maybe they can re-treat the whole gland, or they might try salvage surgery or salvage radiation. Salvage anything on the whole gland can have lots of SEs, so it's not something to rush into.

Is HIFU FDA approved yet?

no, HIFU is not FDA approved in the US, but is only allowed on clinical trials.

You're right that if cancer has spread outside of the prostate, it's a whole different story. But that's extremely unlikely if you were diagnosed with with low risk PC, which I assume you were. There is a relatively high rate of local failure with whole gland HIFU, which is why the FDA and now Canada does not approve it.