Since our usual smarty-pants, Tall Allen, has stepped back from the forum for a few weeks to catch up on the rest of his life, I will take a stab at your questions. First, I can spell "genome" for you. (A
gnome is something else).
I poked around and found a few studies that seem to talk about
what your doctor is suggesting. Here is a press-release from a company that does genome testing:
Two New Studies Show Decipher® Genomic Prostate Cancer Test Charts Best Course of Treatment and Influences Patient Outcomes. It is a bit sales-y and it is talking about
how doctors use the test, not so much about
the test itself, but it gives you some idea what is going on.
Here is a link to another study that has a lot of science going on:
Discovery and Validation of a Prostate Cancer Genomic Classifier that Predicts Early Metastasis Following Radical Prostatectomy Like many cutting-edge scientific papers it is almost indecipherable. But I am fairly sure that it says that their test does a good job of looking at men with high-risk disease (like your husband with his Gleason 9 cancer) and identifying that subset who aren't as high-risk as they are believed to be and who can usually be spared radiation after surgery. It's not a lot of them (four out of five high-risk guys are also high-risk if you look at their genome but that one high-risk guy in five can often be spared further aggressive treatment, at least not right away.)
So, it looks worth doing.