Hi Patrick. Rereading this thread, you said your first post-op PSA result was 0.01 and later said the "<" sign was indeed present. Could you have another look at your actual lab record to see if you misplaced the decimal point? I suspect your first PSA reading was
<0.1 and not <0.01. The first PSA test after a RP is almost always done with the "standard" PSA test used for men who still have their prostates rather than an ultrasensitive PSA test. This test has a lower detection limit of 0.1, so if your PSA doesn't register on the test, it's reported as <0.1, which is "undetectable" for that test.
Note that there should always be a zero
in front of the decimal point when reporting decimal numbers less than one. This also helps prevent confusion: when someone writes
.01 it's often impossible to know whether they mean 0
.01 (forgetting the leading zero) or 0
.1 (misplacing the decimal).
You may want to add your good PSA result to your signature; it's important info.
Djin