Game Changing10 Oct 2023 10:28
Morning. Please don’t take this post as teaching people to suck eggs. I just want to show why PSE is light years ahead of PSA.
This taken from the Prostate Cancer UK website:
“ADVANTAGES:
It can help pick up prostate cancer before you have any symptoms.
It can help pick up a fast-growing cancer at an early stage, when treatment could stop it spreading and causing problems.
A regular PSA test could be helpful, particularly if you have an increased risk of prostate cancer. This could detect any unusual increase in your PSA level that might be a sign of prostate cancer.
DISADVANTAGES:
Your PSA level might be raised, even if you don’t have prostate cancer. Many men with a raised PSA level don’t have prostate cancer.
The PSA test can miss prostate cancer. For example, one major study showed that 1 in 7 men (15 per cent) with a normal PSA level may have prostate cancer, and 1 in 50 men (two per cent) with a normal PSA level may have a fast-growing cancer.
If your PSA level is raised you may need a biopsy. This can cause side effects, such as pain, infection and bleeding. But in most hospitals, men now have an MRI scan first, and only have a biopsy if the scan finds anything unusual.
Being diagnosed with a slow-growing prostate cancer that is unlikely to cause any problems or shorten your life may still make you worry, and may lead you to have treatment that you don't need. But most men with low-risk, localised prostate cancer now have their cancer carefully monitored instead, and only have treatment if the cancer starts to grow. “
The Important bits, why PSE is better:
It’s still a simple blood test sent to a lab. It’s a central lab at present, but this might become a regional or local lab in the future. If it is performed away from OBD’s own lab, it might be via a kit system. Still a simple blood test for the patient, but a dedicated kit in the lab. This maintains QA and IP on the product.
A bit about prostatic cancer:
Prostate cancer is not one disease. The original cancer can develop from different original cells within the prostate. The cancers themselves behave in different ways. Some are slow growing, and stay within the capsule of the gland - think of a walnut, with the shell being the capsule. Other cancers are more aggressive and invasive. These breach the capsule and can be locally invasive or spread into the blood and lymphatic system. Thus the cancer can spread to bones, liver, lung. Very rarely they spread to the brain.
So you can die with the cancer - contained within the gland, or of the cancer if it has spread = metastasised.
Early diagnosis matters, and this is where PSE comes into its own. 3 out of 4 patients with a raised PSA DON’T have cancer, according to one site I’ve seen. This is a huge false positive number. Yet all of these patients will need further investigation to confirm yes or no. A smaller number who test negative will have the disease.
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