Pelvic lymph node dissection, can it cure the cancer?

Hi Warrior68 interesting that 2 experts can give different views.  Can they both be right?  If you remove the lymph nodes and wait 5 years you still won’t know if the surgeon was right or wrong.  In my case, I had RT to pelvic area and chemo and at the end there was no detectable cancer in my prostate or pelvis shown on PET.  My oncologist followed the line that the PCa was still present but dormant and sure enough it has just popped up again in my sternum.  Your decision point is similar to the guys at the start of their journey offered an operation or RT.  I think it’s a personal choice, so I suggest you write a list of pros and cons of each option and then make your decision.  I am sure you will make the right decision for yourself.  Hopefully others will be along with actual info and you can ignore my ramblings.  Best wishes, David

Hi Warrior68!

Sorry to hear that they don’t seem to be able to kill of the cancer. I must ask, why didn’t they put you on ADT together with the radiation in the first place?

I would have presumed that, if they suspect you have a recurrence in LN’s, they would have put you on ADT together with salvage RT to minimize the risk PC cells floating around in the blood have ’access’ to Testosterone and may be able to metastesis. But of course they are the experts and perhaps had a good reason.

Anyway, my personal view is that you shouldn’t wait any longer but go on ADT and Abiraterone because it seems PC is still active and you definitely don’t want to risk feeding ’the cancer beast’

Best wishes - Ulf

Hi Warrior 

Just my thoughts but if I'd had major surgery to remove the prostate' and they then found further cancer in nearby nodes later I don't think I would want further surgery.

I would go for RT and HT, just my opinion.

Regards 

Steve