Another Quest Lab Problem

My husband went in to Quest yesterday for his 15 month post op PSA. His first year of tests (4) were all done at Quest and were all <.1. This test came back at .1. He got a call from surgeon's office telling him this and telling him they were faxing him a new script and to go to a different lab to have it re-done. He went to one of the UPMC hospital labs (hospital labs are not in our insurance network out-patient which is why we don't get it done at the hospital regularly) and got a call that it had come back undetectable (I assume another <.1). This same thing happened to someone else he knows awhile ago, who told us to use the hospital not Quest but the hospital wouldn't even run the test when we tried for the first post-op because of insurance. They sent the specimen to Quest even though we were willing to self pay. Our insurance will be changing in early 2016 as I just retired so I think we are done with Quest. It could have been he was a .08 or something and then went to .1 and next day back under, but given concerns of others around Quest and the doctor being specific to go to a different lab, just wanted to add this incident to the forum as I have seen it come up alot recently..

Next test in 3 months, or really almost 4 months as we wont be back from FL for 2 month winter get away until first week of March.

This has been mentioned several time on the forum. I have had 7 years of <.01 and my recent one 2 weeks ago came back as 0.1 from Quest. Maybe 100% correct. I have went on quest website and asked a question regarding this, as several people have seen this reporting. Again, maybe 100% correct... Makes a case for ultra sensitive testing to force a more definite result

I had a result from Quest that came back using the standard rather than the ultra sensitive test. Quest reported the result as 0.1 (without a "<"). My doctor ordered a re-test and specified they use the ultra sensitive test. Quest then reported the result back as 0.05.

This raises two issues: The first test result should have been reported as "<0.1", not "0.1" And secondly, why would an actual PSA of 0.05 be rounded up? Is this a function of their testing equipment or is this a human decision. Either way, PSA results should never be rounded up.

It is NOT just Quest is I posted in another thread...It is all labs that make this error. Can you not see why MSK whose nomograms you all use has used .4. they facto all this non sense into it. Trust me ...You will know definitively when you have a recurrence fro your own internal senses. Why angsts...if you have no faith in yourself...feggid about it.

JackH:

You said:
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What makes you think that the Quest test result was incorrect?
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Maybe the increasing number of posts on HW mentioning discrepancies?

Mel