Trying to understand PSA values.

Hi Baksteel

Welcome to the club none of us want to belong to.  I am not a doctor but I think at this stage the PSA is less important than the results from MRI and biopsy - from these they will give you a Gleason score and a staging T N M.  The Gleason and the staging will indicate how aggressive the cancer is and whether or not it has spread from the prostate itself. Have you been given this info yet?  You sound like you are very early in the journey so they may not have these but it is useful if you post them here (or in your profile) so people can give you the best help you.

The cancer requires testosterone to grow so they like to get you started on hormone therapy early as this will halt any further growth of the cancer cells.  Hopefully your oncologist will explain all this to you.

Best of luck and come back to the forum if you have more questions, there are a lot of knowledge people here to offer help.  Steve

Hello and welcome BAKsteel . The PSA figures you are seeing on the forum refer to either the initial PSA at time of diagnosis or the PSA after treatment. Your initial PSA gives the experts an indication of your initial cancer burden and is used along with your TNM and biopsy report to initially stage the cancer and come up with a treatment plan. The Degarelix should act very quickly to stop your body from producing testosterone and starve the cancer of its food no matter where it is in the body. The Abiraterone is a hormone therapy which works in a different way and is also good at reducing the PSA and ideally between them you want to get it to an undetectable levels of less than 0.1 within 6 months of starting treatment but this only happens in about 50% of cases. There are different treatments available depending on what type of prostate cancer you have and whether it has broken through the capsule along with any metastases and where they are located. Once treatment has started the PSA is used to monitor how well the cancer is being controlled and whether there is a recurrence. After surgery a recurrence is indicated by a PSA rise above 0.2. After radiotherapy a recurrence is indicated by a rise of 2 above the lowest level which is usually achieved 18 months after treatment. If you are just on hormone therapy then the rate of a PSA rise can guide whether it is still working and whether additional treatment is needed.

There is a good book you can download for free which explains staging and treatments.

https://issuu.com/magazineproduction/docs/js_prostate_cancer_guide_for_patients_ezine

Please come back with any questions and we will try and help.

Thank you SteveB and A.H. for your replies.

So far in my journey neither Gleason score nor T N M have been mentioned to me.   I haven't had a biopsy and all I've been told (in technical terms) has been my PSA level.

In scary terms I was advised by my GP that the indications were that the cancer had migrated to possibly my pelvis and spine -- that was confirmed by the consultant at the hospital after the MRI scan.

As you both mentioned, it was explained to me that the treatment I have already started will prevent the production of testosterone.