PCa and BPH - Good News about Both

ASAdvocate

An update fourteen years into my active surveillance. My “benign” prostate problems recently became serious with causing acute urinary retention, and I needed to clear the blockages.

I chose a one-two protocol of Prostate Artery Embolization followed five days later by aquablation. While PAE will significantly shrink the prostate, and is its own BPH treatment, it was used here to reduce the bleeding from the aquablation and speed my recovery. Aquablation does what TURP does, using a transurethral water jet. New studies show it compares very favorably against TURP.

The aquablation was two days ago, and I am feeling and functioning great. No pain, no blood. Very pleased.

And, all the ablated prostate tissue, or “chips” were sent to pathology to analyze the known prostate cancer.

The report was on MyChart last night, with no cancer found. That matches my last needle biopsy at Johns Hopkins two years ago.

It also reinforces the point that Gleason 6 PCa can be minimal and not show up on biopsy, and/or can simply disappear over time.

Now, I have both the physical BPH relief and the mental relief of the pathology report to celebrate😁

centralPA

Very cool!

Did they weigh the removed tissue so you can get a sense of the prostates new size? How much was it hollowed out?

My PSA plummeted after my HoLEP procedure, far more than I would have expected. it will be interesting to see what yours does.

ASAdvocate

https://csn.cancer.org/discussion/comment/1705706#Comment_1705706

I don’t think they weighed that tissue. My prostate was 60cc before the procedures. The aquablation removes most of the interior tissue. They draw a fence zone just within the gland, and everything within that zone is ablated. The wild card in estimating my new prostate size is that the PAE typically causes the gland to shrink by 35 to 50 percent over the next three months.

So, there are two factors affecting the eventual size. I have been told by all my doctors not to have a PSA test for at least three months, preferably six months.

centralPA

I had my PSA tested at the three month point, it went down from above 5 to around 0.4, bounced back to 0.77 at 9 months. Probably good idea to wait 6 months so things settle out.

eonore

What a great report! Good luck with both your BPH and cancer.

Eric

lighterwood67

Great news. Always glad to read about the good results. Thanks for posting.

Old Salt

Thanks for posting. It's always great to hear about long term successes.