psa 33

kev03103
kev03103 Member Posts: 3
in Prostate Cancer #1
I have not been seeing a doctor regularly, I am 59 with a PSA of 33. I am scared. The urologist gave me bactrim for 2 weeks. there was no change in PSA. No real symptoms except frequent urination. Biopsy is next...what are my chances? kevin

Comments

  • Swingshiftworker
    Swingshiftworker Member Posts: 1,017 Member
    #2
    Chances Are?
    No telling what your chances are until you find out whether you have prostate cancer (PCa) or not and, if you do, what the extent of it is.

    That said, if you have PCa, your chances for long term survival (10-20 years) are good to excellent as long as the cancer is still contained w/in the prostate. Following successful treatment, you'll more likely die of something other than PCa. However, chances are not so good if the cancer has already metastasized and migrated to other parts of the body.

    Only a biopsy will tell you for "sure" if you have PCa or not; provided the biopsy does not yield a "false" negative, which is possible since only 10-12 biopsy samples are taken from the prostate and it's possible to miss the cancer in the process.


    Has your urologist entirely ruled out BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia) as the "cause" of your elevated PSA? If so, then the next step would be to get the biopsy.

    Let us know what the biopsy results are. Good luck!
  • laserlight
    laserlight Member Posts: 165
    #3
    Swingshiftworker said:

    Chances Are?
    No telling what your chances are until you find out whether you have prostate cancer (PCa) or not and, if you do, what the extent of it is.

    That said, if you have PCa, your chances for long term survival (10-20 years) are good to excellent as long as the cancer is still contained w/in the prostate. Following successful treatment, you'll more likely die of something other than PCa. However, chances are not so good if the cancer has already metastasized and migrated to other parts of the body.

    Only a biopsy will tell you for "sure" if you have PCa or not; provided the biopsy does not yield a "false" negative, which is possible since only 10-12 biopsy samples are taken from the prostate and it's possible to miss the cancer in the process.


    Has your urologist entirely ruled out BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia) as the "cause" of your elevated PSA? If so, then the next step would be to get the biopsy.

    Let us know what the biopsy results are. Good luck!

    Kevin
    The biopsy is the true indicator of cancer. Now if the doctor performs the biopsy I would make sure that he takes enough samples, I agree with Swingshiftworker. When I had my biopsy the doctor took 18 samples, he split the prostate 9 on the left side 9 on the right side. This gave him a lot of information to work with. I was in stage t2c with a psa level of only 2.25. The samples came back with between 40 to 60 % cancer cells. It is hard to tell if you got cancer just from the psa level. Now did the doctor perform the FREE PSA test, this can help. Keep us posted. With myself my psa level shifted by a small amount. But at the age of 50 the doctor started to track and baseline my pas level. I am 62 and was diagnosed in Jan of 2011. Good Luck. Kurt

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