Rising PSA

Kidscaddy said...
My husband had his prostatectomy in 2015 with pathology showing it in the margins. His PSA has gone from .1 to .19 in 6 months. I’m worried!

I can understand your worries. do the doctors have a plan?

Do you know if the test six months ago was "1" or was it specifically "1.0"? Part of the change could be due to how many decimal places the test is using. At any rate, I think you would want a re-test as part of any follow-up plan.

Wishing you the best of luck with this!

Thank you! It’s quite the journey. Seems like there are so many twists and turns.

Yep, it's time for salvage radiation. Simple as that. Still a great chance for a good outcome, but the sooner the better.

Good luck!

Our urologist ordered another PSA to be sure of the increase. We will know what it is tomorrow.

So I called for the results and the new test is .12. I haven’t heard from the dr yet. I just don’t know what to think.

Don’t get me wrong. We are happy with a drop, just confused with the ups and downs.

That’s an encouraging sign that it went down. Hopefully it will plateau around 0.1 and he won’t need any additional treatment. Good luck!

Kids, you didnt mention your husbands PSA hsitory since the surgery. Was he undetectable at first, and for how long? What was the sequence of test results? has this been a slow steady rise, or did it jump from Undetectable to .1, then to .19?

Regardless, it does seem likely that its time for Salvage Radiation, unless you are of a mind to wait for another test in a few months and if it rises over .2, do one of the advanced scans to see if you could locate the source. However the chance that even advanced scans would show anything at this low psa level is not very high.

Kidscaddy said...
It has run between .01 and .03 and Oct 2019 it went to .11, Jan .10 and these last two in Aug are .19

Well, this is why we survivors of prostate surgery test. So that we can spot an upward trend that is getting close to what most specialists call "biochemical recurrence", or BCR. Or spot a trend that looks like it will probably get there over time. That BCR level is usually considered to be about .20, give or take. So, yes, time to get more medical help.

Don't worry too much, though. Mark's chances of coming out of secondary treatment (probably radiation) with no further treatment needed, are pretty good, given his relatively low psa value at this point. It's usually just some upfront tests/prep, then maybe a couple months of daily radiation treatments, each taking very little time. Then back to the testing, as most of us are doing regularly. That's a given for the rest of our lives.

The more I read about possible side effects, the more I am thinking it will work out ok if I have to go the radiation route. We do what we have to do. It's a pretty typical path that a lot of us here have gone through, or will need to in the future.

Good luck, and keep us posted on Mark's progress. We all wish him well.

Robert

Got a call from the urologist today and he going to send Mark to a RO. I’m sure that will take a few days to happen but I wanted to let you know.

Our consultation with the RO is next Wed.