3 Month PSA Results Question

Graytech,

The standard test has a lower limit of .1. Your test is more sensitive, as it reads down to .05. The "<" means your PSA was below the lower limit of the assay used, so your PSA is undetectable by the assay that was used. Thats is good news.

There is a spirited debate among members of this site about whether the untrasensitive test creates more anxiety than it's worth. I'm on the side that it is good to have more information. I would get a test that has a lower limit of .01, but you should go out and celebrate your undetectable PSA reading.

Congrats!

Post Edited (FrackMe) : 5/5/2015 9:30:08 AM (GMT-6)

The <.05 mark has until recently, on this site at least, been the the cut off for what is and not detectable on ultra sensitive tests. New studies show that <.03 with certain post op pathology are better benchmarks. Fear not the there will eventually be a study indicating that even<.01 will not be enough to get you out of the woods. The question is,imo, Is technology driving needed treatment, by getting more and more refined, or is it " if you build it they will come " There are, as in most controversies, truth on both sides of the aisle. You are going to worry about psa tests in your future. So watch the trend, don't agonize over them…you have an excellent pathology report, live there for a while. Matter of fact live wherever you reside with whatever your'e holden!

Thanks for the clarifications and insight. I am profoundly grateful to be one of the lucky one's with good results on all fronts.

Celebrate I shall, I think a Margarita is in order given it's Cinco de Mayo.

This question comes up often in here....and I'll continue to throw in the perspective of someone who does low range chemical analysis for a living.....

There is a truly endless debate among us lab types about this very thing. Just because we believe we can measure some extremely small value...what are we measuring? And what does that super low number mean? I haven't researched the PSA question specifically, but the general question is about how repeatable is the number? How good, to use our term, is the QC/QA? What does the bell curve look like. If you send an identical unknown sample to 100 labs, what is the 95% confidence rating (+/- 1 standard deviation)?

There will come a time when they will develop an instrument that can supposedly go to 0.00001. Or lower. Will it be meaningful? I have my doubts.

Great news on the low numbers. Wishing you many more.
Rick

I don't have any doubts it will be meaningful. If they build it they will find a raisson de etre for it and some folks will bite. Its the just the way our species is at this stage of evolution. The positive side is that at some point in time most cancers will be treated in their gestation stage by nanotechnology. that will not be that distant from now, barring catastrophic wars or natural events. Its a big bar to hop and if it happens , survivors will indeed survive and go to greater heights eventually peopling the the universe. this will/has happened in time. Counter intuitively the the most amazing truths are the simpler ones. Man is the ONLY sentient being, Period. isaac Asimov prophesied this in the "Foundation Series" The writers Of "Interstellar" picked up on it….. as well as the concept that indeed when something is happening here in time,some thing is happening at the same time lightyears not relatively speaking except the light of the happening does not arrive till X based on the distance. Oh yeh…Love is a particle as are all virtues and they travel faster than the speed of light, which again in time will be seen as a very slow speed{ light that is} indeed. Ok, now where is the notebook I use to handwrite in tiny letters and words all my thoughts….. I have them …you know. Ok lights out ...overhead sets south shore...Ill be there at dawn.

Post Edited (logoslidat) : 5/6/2015 1:23:26 AM (GMT-6)

"Currently understood" is the operative term. The human species is the creative force in the universe/multiverse. This in no way negates a transcendent force that is beyond any thing we can comprehend or will ever be able to comprehend while we are physically part of the physical universe/multiverse. Just me positing such a thought{I am not the only one,tho the thought is seminal to me,as well as anyone having the same, not knowing of the other specifically}, starts the creative process. the mechanics of which may never be discovered and may never actually happen. It really depends on the collective conscious and unconsciousness realizing each other simultaneously. These words are not as hard to grasp if they are followed carefully. Not double talk, triple talk etc…. geometric talk… Either that or I am crazy as loon{whatever that is} Ich Mach Nix Its harmless speculation that may or may not be "true" I happen to think it is a rational hypotheses . . But than the loon appears…..sigh….

Loons are not particularly crazy, as birds go. Now, hearing a pair of them call across a lake in the middle of a summer night will send chills down your spine...They are, however, the coolest of the water birds. Followed closely by whooping cranes.