I just switched my lab to Quest. Is <.04 their version of undetectable?
QuestDiagnostics PSA Test: I just... - Advanced Prostate...
QuestDiagnostics PSA Test
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6357axbz
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My hospital uses Sonora, their undetectable is <.1. As long as it's got a < sign, I'm happy.
I am from Montreal and my lowest PSA was <0.01 μg/L .
I started at 24.6 μg/L .
My Lowest Testosterone = <0.2nmol/L and is now 2.1nmol/L.
I an 76 years young, had VMAT-RT 20 fx of 3 Gys for a Rx of 60 Gys .
I was also on ADT Lupron Depot 45 mg/6months.
Following are the different units.
Testosterone
SI UNITS
2.1 nmol/L
CONVENTIONAL UNITS
0.6057 ng/mL
60.5682 ng/dL
60.5682 ng/100mL
60.5682 ng%
605.682 ng/L
0.6057 µg/L
That's a great score by any standard.
According to my husband's MO, PSA results of <.04 from Quest is viewed as undetectable. Happy Days!
From the Quest Diagnostics website:
PSA, Post Prostatectomy - For post-prostatectomy patients.The lower limit of accurate quantification for this assay is 0.02 ng/mL. PSA values less than 0.02 ng/mL cannot be accurately measured and will be reported as less than 0.02 ng/mL. Specimens with PSA levels below the lower limit of accurate quantification should be considered as negative. In patients with a negative result for post-prostatectomy PSA, serial monitoring of PSA levels at regular intervals, along with physical examinations and other tests, may help to detect recurrent prostate cancer.
My husband uses Quest. The <0.02 verbiage referenced above is for the Ultra Sensitive. The standard PSA at Quest only goes to <0.04. My husband gets them both on alternate months for some reason. He's been <0.04 on the standard and <0.02 on the Ultra sensitive. (He has not had a prostatectomy)
TY
Yes
I seem to remember a comment from you about in general, anything 0.03 or below is considered "undetectable" by the PC practitioners? Does that sound familiar?
It is negligible
Sure beats 6357.
Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.
J-o-h-n Thursday 02/23/2023 6:34 PM EST
• in reply toj-o-h-n
John, were they your numbers when you started this journey, what are your numbers now, if you don't mind me asking. Thank you!
j-o-h-n• in reply to
To Mio-Myo, (Meo Myo Song by Jack Scott).
No problem, No issue: Here they are:
Started "my journey" February 2002 From DRE (Urologist).
RP=As of 9/27/2002 Stage pT3a, Gleason 4+4=8/10, PSA 5.1. (Sloan Kettering)
No Meds during this period.
Started Lupron and Casodex until two weeks ago. (Sloan Kettering)
P.S.A. ????% as of 03/18/08
P.S.A. 0.33% as of 06/17/08
P.S.A. 0.22% as of 09/08/08
P.S.A. 0.14% as of 12/02/08
P.S.A. 0.14% as of 02/24/09
P.S.A. 0.10% as of 05/20/09
P.S.A. 0.09% as of 08/11/09
P.S.A. 0.08% as of 09/09/09
P.S.A. 0.09% as of 11/03/09
P.S.A. 0.14% as of 12/02/09
P.S.A. 0.21% as of 01/26/10
P.S.A. 0.30% as of 04/20/10
P.S.A. 0.50% as of 07/23/10
P.S.A. 0.92% as of 11/16/10
P.S.A. 1.39% as of 02/09/11
P.S.A. 2.54% as of 05/18/11
P.S.A. 5.97% as of 09/07/11
P.S.A. 0.58% as of 12/13/11
P.S.A. 0.52% as of 03/02/12
P.S.A. 0.90% as of 05/29/12
P.S.A. 3.11% as of 09/12/12
P.S.A. 8.33% as of 12/05/12
P.S.A. 0.58% as of 04/02/13
P.S.A. 0.48% as of 07/09/13
P.S.A. 0.31% as of 11/05/13
P.S.A. 0.91% as of 02/12/14
P.S.A. 1.95% as of 05/19/14
P.S.A. 7.33% as of 09/11/14
P.S.A. 0.46% as of 12/10/14
P.S.A. 0.54% as of 03/12/15
P.S.A. 0.50% as of 06/18/15
P.S.A. 0.60% as of 09/21/15
P.S.A. 0.70% as of 12/21/15
P.S.A. 0.71% as of 03/21/16
P.S.A. 0.94% as of 06/20/16
P.S.A. 1.16% as of 09/19/16
P.S.A. 1.32% as of 12/13/16
P.S.A. 1.75% as of 03/27/17
P.S.A. 3.03% as of 10/04/17
P.S.A. 3.46% as of 01/08/18
P.S.A. 2.82% as of 02/20/18
P.S.A. 1.97% as of 04/05/18
P.S.A. 1.25% as of 07/09/18
P.S.A. 1.19% as of 10/01/18
P.S.A. 1.65% as of 01/14/19
P.S.A. 1.15% as of 04/16/19
P.S.A. 1.26% as of 07/17/19
P.S.A. 1.11% as of 10/02/19
P.S.A. 1.11% as of 01/15/20
P.S.A. 1.32% as of 07/07/20
P.S.A. 1.01% as of 08/28/20
P.S.A. 0.99% as of 11/30/20
P.S.A. 1.10% as of 02/05/21
P.S.A. 1.18% as of 03/16/21
P.S.A. 1.08% as of 07/06/21
P.S.A. 1.18% as of 10/11/21
P.S.A. 1.15% as of 01/06/22
P.S.A. 1.14% as of 03/22/22
P.S.A. 1.36% as of 07/06/22
P.S.A. 1.30% as of 08/18/22
P.S.A. 1.67% as of 10/27/22
P.S.A. 1.98% as of 12/30/22
P.S.A. 2.14% as of 02/20/23 Stopped Casodex.
P.S. Would you like to see my weight management log?.
Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.
j-o-h-n Friday 02/24/2023 12:54 PM EST
• in reply toj-o-h-n
Thank you John, your PSA looks really good over the years, good for you!
Jack (scafoni ) Scott from hazel park Mi. My True love ( words from one of his songs )Going back a few years.
Jack Scott (born Giovanni Domenico Scafone Jr.; January 24, 1936 – December 12, 2019) was a Canadian-American singer and songwriter. He was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2011 and was called "undeniably the greatest Canadian rock and roll singer of all time.
Scott spent his early childhood in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from Detroit, Michigan. When he was 10, his family moved to Hazel Park, a Detroit suburb. He grew up listening to hillbilly music and was taught to play the guitar by his mother, Laura. As a teenager, he pursued a singing career and recorded as "Jack Scott". At the age of 18, he formed the Southern Drifters. After leading the band for three years, he signed to ABC-Paramount Records as a solo artist in 1957.
Scott died of congestive heart failure on December 12, 2019, at the age of 83. His niece, singer and actress Rio Scafone, announced his death on her Facebook page, stating that he had suffered a massive heart attack on December 8 and there was nothing they could do for him. Scott died four days later, in the afternoon.
Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.
j-o-h-n Friday 02/24/2023 6:39 PM EST
That’s my house address.
Sorry but you've been evicted.....Too many sexy looking women in and out late at night.....
Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.
j-o-h-n Friday 02/24/2023 11:11 PM EST
I also use Quest for my uPSA tests following RP in 2018. Mine have always come back <0.03.
A while back I probably spent two hours contacting Quest because I wanted to clearly understand their uPSA limits. Finally, I was able to speak with a tech at the main Quest Lab in Arizona. He explained that different Quest labs have different limits...some (like mine) measure to <0.03 but others use <0.04 as their lowest limit. As long as you have the "<" sign in front, you are golden. Hope this is clear as mud.
I was an engineer on an earlier version of the system Quest had used for PSA. What Allie2020 said sounds right. The Centaur system that I worked on had a user configurable that controlled the low limit setting and, although the band of values may have changed as the systems improved, I’d be shocked if the labs would have given up the ability to set their own limits. The same is true for many assays. Congratulations on being undetectable!
6357axbz• in reply to
Thank-you
TJGuy• in reply to
I think you're saying as some of us may know is that there is what the test can MEASURE to and then what the test REPORTS to. So a lab as LabCorp has done several years ago can change what it reports to, meaning what you see as your PSA. They have ultrasensitive PSA tests that can "measure" down to <0.006 but have change what they would "report" to different levels higher than that for a while. Since it created confusion and concern among patients they finally returned back to the lowest measurable as their reported PSA.
Contrary to my experience. I used LabCorp for a year after RARP and each result was <0.1. When I switched to Quest Diagnostics my PSA results have been 0.06, 0.09 and 0.11 over the last six months. I suspect all three of those may have been reported as <0.1 from LabCorp.
You have to request the one of the two LabCorp ultrasensitive PSA tests. They both are the same ultrasensitive test but one is with serial monitoring and the other is without serial monitoring. The with serial monitoring gives you pretty graph of your numbers and cost more. Just get without serial monitoring.
Looking good
Maybe, I’ve been on holiday from Lupron for a year and from Zytiga for nearly 8 months. Testosterone is still around 50 so either that is why I’m still undetectable or, hopefully, there has been no progression.
• in reply to6357axbz
I have two Questions. Is there Significance to this # that John used 6,357 or am I just so tired I am missing something. The other question is your Testosterone at 50. Is this good? My husbands went from 10 to 48 in a month with PSA also rising. Thank you, lol I was attacked by a rooster yesterday, I think I’ve lost my mind!
Mio
6357axbz• in reply to
I think John was making fun of my “nom de guerre”.
50 is low. Ideally if one goes on a medication holiday you want go see your T fully recover so your body can benefit from that hormone.
HEY ANA!!! Help....... someone said I was making fun of their "nom de guerre".... is that a good thing or a bad thing? By the way who's did you invite to dinner tonight? "Oh RAMBO again, is he bringing wine?".
Good Luck, Good Health and Good Humor.
j-o-h-n Friday 02/24/2023 3:33 PM EST
Since Quest uses a different method of testing PSA. When you go elsewhere like a doctor's office or a hospital there will be a difference in your PSA reading than would result if you went to LabCorp. Just so you know that. I believe Quest would always return a slightly lower PSA value from the exact same blood sample taken.This is irrespective of any test limit of "undetectable" .
Beyond that, all tests do some sense of rounding of the final digit shown. So if you took two tests from the same lab one standard test reporting to one digit to the right of the decimal point and another to two digits to the right, at the same time one might show 0.2. And the more sensitive one might show 0.16 for example. Taking that further, a test that measures even more digits might return 0.168.
The most sensitive tests I've used were LabCorp that measured to <0.006. And at a hospital that measured to <0.01
My prior labs reported <.001
Reason I switched to Quest is because they issue me a nice pdf file with all the results I can then conveniently send to my 4 doctors. The other labs didn’t issue me a report and never seemed to be able to get my results to all my docs.
When last I checked (approx. 2.5 yrs ago) Quest was I believe the only lab using the Siemens chemiluminescent analyzer for PSA assays so the numbers varied slightly from others. Regardless, your number is very good, congrats
Just hoping that I’m not basking in a fool’s paradise, that while I’m enjoying low PSA my CTCs aren’t finding comfy nooks and crannies, creating their own self protective cocoons getting ready to blossom and light up my skeleton once they become detectable. If I’m not misunderstanding I think this is TA’s concern.
I've been using Quest for five years now since first diagnosed 0.1 has been my PSA.
Quests undetectable is <.1
my previous two PSA tests from them were both <.04
The Quest "Post Prostatectomy" test goes to the <0.02 mentioned above. It costs more than the regular Quest PSA test. Just got my results this week and thankfully still <0.02.
I still have a prostate. My PSA at Quest is <0.04. Hoping it stays there.
As I've mentioned here before - worrying about numbers with a small number of significant digits is ummm... unnecessary. By an odd happenstance, I had TWO PSA tests (for different MDs) done by Quest on samples (separate samples) taken at the same blood draw. I'd have to go back and look up the exact numbers - but the results were different enough to be noticeable. One was something like 0.17, the other was 0.23. Same day, same machine, most likely same blood, and I'd assume the same tech running the machine.
I inquired of Quest why there was a difference and the answer was silence.
I don't get concerned with small number changes.. Since my testerone recovered (T=380 now,) my average read is around 0.18, but it floats around a bit from 0.21 to 0.14, which for someone who still has a prostate is just fine according to all my MD's (uro, rad-onc, med-onc). It's been generally trending down from the high of the two-reading day of 0.23. It was undetectable when I was on ADT (T=11).
The lesson is - don't sweat the small stuff.
I believe quest sends out to different labs depending on where you are located. The lab they use in Orange County CA is a Coulter machine and I believe it is <0.02 minimum. For the last 2.5 years I've been getting the "post prostatectomy PSA" (every 6 months) since my surgery.
So the post RP test what every the name it is a ultrasensitive test, they can call it anything they want for marketing reasons. But the important thing is it goes to at least 0.02. Why do you ask? because if your six week post RP PSA never gets to 0.02 or less your very likely to have reoccurrence. If it gets to 0.02 or less it unlikely you'll have reoccurrence. But the issue is that Quest number is lower than the real number by a bit so if Quest shows 0.02 did you really get there or not? Best to confirm with a LabCorp ultrasensitive PSA test as well.
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