Alf not really zero - he has a question

I've been away from HW for so long and indeed been in the zero club for so long that I've hardly thought about PCa for rather a long time and have therefore slightly lost touch with what the latest thinking, guidelines etc are when it coming to post treatment monitoring etc.
Yet now I'm back. But Why?

After half a dozen years of getting undetectable PSA results my urologist decided that it would be okay to get my bloods done once a year locally at my GP rather than to have to keep travelling to Amsterdam to get bloods done and then go back a second time to get the results.
Two years ago my GP was telling me I had a great PSA of <0.001. Last March the lab gave it as <0.01.
But now it's come back as 0.03.

Am I right that this now puts me in a new situation?
I am planning, as a first step, to pop back to Amsterdam to get them to redo my bloods in their lab too just to make sure it's not a blip.

You guys (and gals) have had plenty of great advice in the past, so has anyone got any additional thoughts or maybe suggestions of questions I should ask when I speak to them on the phone or see them in person, etc.

Alf

Alf,
If the retest comes back at 0.03, it looks like an upward trend. But given you already had SRT you may still be a long way off from further treatment. For about 4 years after SRT my PSA was 0.00. In 2014 it became detectable again at 0.02 - about where you are now. It took another two years to reach 0.2 at which point I moved my care to a medical oncologist. We monitored for another two years before needing to start ADT. You may or may not have a similar trajectory, but even if you do need further treatment it may be a few years in the future.

Let us know how your follow-up PSA goes.
Jim

Alf-- A couple of things to consider.

Test instruments vary in their lower detection limit for ultrasensitive PSA. The lab I use has a lower detection limit of 0.03. Some lab reports report 0.03 if PSA is not detectable; others report < 0.03, as mine does.

You may want to check with the testing lab, to find out which instrument and test method they use, what the lowest detection value is and how they report undetectable PSAs. Sometimes this information is on the test report itself. You can also do an internet search for more information on that instrument and test methodology.

I’ve always thought it best to test with the same lab every time. Differences in their testing methods can cause you unnecessary stress. May be time for another trip to Amsterdam. I think I would be going.