Ultrasensitive PSA-A Parable

Once there was a crew of home builders, who had a long reputation of quality built homes that had a high rate of on-time completion within budget and few post-construction issues. They had achieved this reputation through lots of hard work. The carpenters worked well together and, as a group, were highly skilled.

They had achieved all this reputation over a period of years, and each carpenter had his favorite tools. One tool they all used was a tape measure. A basic tool to be sure, with numerous manufacturers and various brands. All the tape measures they used had one thing in common: they were graduated to 1/16th of an inch.

One day an enterprising salesman arrived on a jobsite. The salesman was hawking a new, improved tape measure, graduated to 1/128th of an inch. He convinced the boss that if the carpenters started using this new, improved tape measure, the homes they built would be better. They would have fewer fit issues, the available precision of their work would be noticeable, and he could charge more for the same basic home because of the high level of precision. So, predictably, the boss purchased one for each of the carpenters. When the new tapes came in, the boss handed them out, and confiscated all the old, well worn measuring tapes.

Within a few weeks, however, the boss noticed that each of the carpenters had new versions of their old, trusted tape measures hanging on their tool belts. When he went around and asked why, he got the following answers:

"Boss, my eyes aren't as good as they used to be. I can't read those itty bitty lines, and there's so many of them I can't tell one from the other."

"When I'm on the saw, by the time I make a pencil line, I can't figure out which side of the line I'm supposed to cut, and besides, the saw blade cut is way wider than that stupid 1/128th so what's the point?"

"You know good and well that we can't fit drywall that close. We're making more mistakes and wasting more material trying to use those d*** things"

"Who cares?"

"Do you realize how much time we waste on every measurement trying to get it perfect?"

"That salesman sold you a bill of goods!"

The boss collected all of the ultra-sensitive tape measures, and kept them in a box in his office, as a reminder.

1/128th may be too much for building a house .... for building a microchip it may be too little.

Ultra sensitive PSAs are probably useful in determining the early return of the beast.

Why don't we use decimal points when we report baiting averages (i.e. 333.333 .... Wouldn't that be more useful then 333?)

Again the distinction between the two tests is that the ultra sensitive is used post treatment. It does not take any great level of knowledge to understand the distinction between the two tests. It is pretty straight forward As a patient you get the choice to educate yourself or not. Personally I like to error on the side of potentially more information than needed rather than potentially too little. I have my second post op PSA coming up in a week or two and will be asking for the ultra sensitive test. Labcorp has an optional service where they will track and chart the results over time.

Am I the only one having a problem following this thread due to having to scroll right and left continuously to read it?

I wonder if there is a formatting issue in the initial post that then goes down the page.

Just an observation.

Ken

It was cut & paste from a different text format, which drives it over the normal borders. I tried to reformat it, but
that did not work out.

(I suspect it is made worse by the labcorp link)

Got it - should read better now.