Will MRI show cancer? Thoughts on natural cures?

I had a co-worker who died of secondary liver cancer following treatment for colon cancer. He went for a "cure" to a doctor in Nevada. The treatment there was to basically put him in insulin shock then administer some chemo agent at a high dose. He came back to work after that treatment looking much, much worse. He was unable to work much longer...a few weeks...and died within 3 months.

I guess the lesson here is that IMO, it's one thing to sign on to a true clinical trial and be part of a controlled research situation. It's quite another to consciously defy the conventional wisdom in search of a cure based on anecdotal evidence. And, that statement applies to diet and supplements as well as things like laetrile. Eating properly and attempting to otherwise stay healthy is overall a good thing. We all could probably improve that.

Several comments here about the Gleason 7 needing to be treated...

My understanding is that the OP has four cores positive, two that are Gleason 6 and two that are Gleason 7. The Gleason 7 says that 10% of the cells are Grade 4. I know that any Gleason 7 is not your typical AS situation, but I believe I have read here that some AS programs will accept Gleason 7. (But perhaps not with two GL 7 cores.)

If Wolfster is trying to avoid treatment (I'm just surmising this due to the question about natural cures), I'd like to know if AS is a viable option. Plus, as for as we know, Wolfster has not had a second opinion on his biopsy slides. Seems like that's worth checking into given that he appears to be barely in G7 territory.

Wolfster--my apologies for talking about about you in the third person, but just trying to get some answers in an area that I'm not expert on by any means. Good luck to you no matter what path you take!

Halbert,

I can't speak for 142; he and I draw the line differently but in this case he simply beat me to posting since I was about to issue a warning, too.

For me the line is when I start to see comments on a thread where religion is becoming the subject at the expense of the topic of the thread. Often a thread notifying us that someone is sick will take the form "Bob is sick. Pray for Bob" and the comments will say either "I am praying for Bob" or "I am thinking about Bob." The subject is "Bob's" illness and, while we may infer something about the participants' belief in the efficacy of prayer from their comments, the subject remains central. I think if you will read back over this thread you will notice that the subject of religion was becoming a distraction. It's not always clear whose fault it is but it is clearer that the line has been crossed.

Re MRI accuracy:
Pretty accurate in the 90% range in detecting primary lesions and estimate their grade.
Remember nothing dealing with PC is close to 100% accurate. There are always exceptions that are missed.

According to Lanz et al.:
230 tumor foci were detected among the 125 patients based on the post-surgical radical prostatectomy specimens.
mpMRIs had detected 151 suspicious areas of prostate tissue prior to biopsy in 115/125 patients.
Among the 115 patients with suspicious areas of tissue on mpMRI, targeted biopsies were able to
Detect the “index” lesion — i.e., the lesion with the highest Gleason score — in 100 percent of these men
Detect 126 (54.8 percent) of the 230 tumor foci found at post-surgical pathology
The accuracy of determination of Gleason data for the 126 tumor foci identified on mpMRI was
114/126 (90.5 percent) for the primary Gleason grade
75/126 (59.5 percent) for the secondary Gleason grade
85/126 (67.5 percent) for the compound Gleason score
The maximal Gleason score was accurately determined in 80 patients.
The accuracy of determination of Gleason scores on targeted biopsies was significantly higher for
Tumors with low Gleason scores
Tumors with high PI-RADS scores
Lanz et al. conclude that targeted biopsies based on mpMRI/TRUS data
allowed for an accurate estimation of Gleason score in more than two third of patients. Gleason score misclassification was mostly due to a lack of accuracy for the determination of the secondary Gleason grade.

Posted on the Prostate Cancer Info Link.