My first PSA reading after Radiation - it went down a little.

Hi All;

I am hopeful that this is a new trend for me. After my PSA never went to zero after surgery (0.32 at 6 weeks), (0.64 at 12 weeks) my first PSA came back after 34 sessions of IMRT/IGRT Radiation. It was 0.60. I am hopeful that it may be starting to work against my Cancer.

Just wondering what others with quick rising PSA after surgery who then did Radiation have discovered about the movement of their PSA.

I do understand that this is my first reading of the start of a new baseline, and that Radiation can cause PSA to go up before it goes down.

thanks to all on this site!

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Prostate Pathology:
Radical prostatectomy 4/4/2013:
Specimen Source:
A. Prostate
B. Right Pelvic lymph node
C. Left Pelvic Lymph Node
Diagnosis:
A. Radical prostatectomy specimen (46 g)
- Extensively involved bilaterally with prostatic adenocarcinoma (Gleason pattern 4+3, total score 7)
- Approximately 45% of prostate slides contain tumor
- The greatest diameter of tumor is 1.8cm in the left posterior inferior aspect of the gland
- The tumor extends into, but not beyond the prostatic pseudocapsule but is focally present at a right posterior mid pseudocapsular recestion margin
- Intraprostatic perineural infiltration with tumor and high grade PIN are identified
- The apical, base, pseudocapsular and soft resection margins and seminal are negative for tumor
B. One Lymph node negative for tumor
C. One Lymph node negative for tumor
AJCC stage: PT2NOMAX

Prostate Gland:
Histologic Type: Adenocarcinoma (conventional, not otherwise specified)
Histologic Grade Primary {Pattern Grade: 4
Secondary Pattern Grade; 3
Total Gleason score: 7

Based on the info supplied, and you may be missing some key dates, you should have experienced a substantial PSA drop after completing salvage radiation. When was the first post reading done? My RO waited 3 months, to allow the radiation to complete its work, before taking the reading.

You next reading should be a pretty good indicator of whether it worked or not. In my own SRT experience, I got a 75% reduction on the first reading, and that was it. From that point on, it rose every single time, and was considered a failure in less than 9 months. I went into it, however, only with a 20% probability of it working, so it wasn't much of a surprise to me that it failed.

Hope you do much better than I did.

David

Not necessarily Buddy, mine halved every three months and didn't reach undetectable for 13 months. My radiation oncologist predicted that it would take about a year for my PSA to go undetectable upon completing SRT and as long as it isn't rising not to worry.

A book entitled "Advanced Therapy of Prostate Cancer" authored in 2000 by Martin Resnick and Ian Thompson [Terry Herbert from Yananow added that the book appeared to be out of print after I made the reference on his website. It was published by B.C. Decker Inc and the ISBN reference is ISBN 13:781550091021] summarized studies indicating the average SRT response is gradual between 2 and 48 months with a mean of 12 months.

That was my experience anyway.

Our best,
Jake

Thanks Jake - that's good to know. Appreciated.