Undetectable PSA

[Huzzah1]

Yesterday I received my 3rd Eligard (3 month) injection. I'm also on Zytiga and finished 44 IMRT 5 weeks ago. The cancer center is attached to a large hospital and they test the blood work in house. MO says everything looked great and that my PSA is now undetectable. The lab report says <0.0 ng/ml. PSA was performed using Roche Immunoassay method. I see a number of posts listing PSA numbers with a lot of digits. If my PSA number was 0.01, would that have shown up in this test? Is my PSA really 0.000?

[Tall_Allen]

The extra digits are useless and don't matter.

[anony2020 in reply to Tall_Allen]

Thanks. That is most useful info and clarification. 🙂

[SteveTheJ]

Every scientific measurement has some uncertainty and is subject to limits of same. IMHO, as a general rule, if the first character of your PSA is > then the level is undetectable which is as good as it gets.

[Adendino]

That is wonderful news. My husband is also Gleason 9 (4+5) with T3b and SVI and EPE, but no lymph node involvement according to Pylarify PSMA Pet scan. Can you elaborate on your IMRT and what areas they hit with radiation? We have been recommended an identical treatment protocol (Lupron + Zytiga + prednisone + IMRT), but we haven’t started the IMRT yet. I was surprised they don’t want to do HDR BT, but they said it’s because of the SVI. Did you discuss HDR BT with your RO?

[Huzzah1 in reply to Adendino]

I saw 3 RO's before I picked my team. They all recommended IMRT. I had the prostate hit and both left and right lymph node chains. The tumors were on the left side.

[Atdabeach]

I'm on Eligard and abiraterone (going on 5 months), and my PSA as reported by Labcorp is "<0.1." I asked my MO whether it would be worth getting a more precise test, and she said not really, but I could get them done at the hospital's lab next time and it would add another zero or two after the decimal. I think I will, just for my own info, since my next round of tests coincide with a hospital visit.

[Mormon1]

stop worrying stop worrying.

[cancerfox]

From what I have read, PSA testing equipment can't actually read down to 0.000, but something like .003 - .006 for the most sensitive equipment, and something like .03 for older equipment. You would also have to know the accuracy of the equipment actually used in your test, not some quoted numbers for near perfect laboratory conditions. Since I think you still have your prostate, it should continue to produce PSA at some low level, so your PSA most likely isn't actually zero. 🦊