PSA Rise as Cancer Predictor – with Dr. Gordon’s Comments
By Linda on Apr 1, 2011 in F.I.G.H.T. | comments(0)
Dr. Gordon’s Comments:
PSA level velocity is a red herring; another myth about cancer diagnosis and treatment falls apart. How many men have lived in fear for years and some have had multiple biopsies, which I do not order for my patients because prostate cancer is the easiest of all cancers to treat with natural products.
– the “velocity” of rising PSA has needlessly tripled the biopsy rate providing risk without benefit for patients”
Since biopsies are now known to help spread cancer, the benefit to risk ratio for 2 out of 3 biopsies is clearly negative. What we need, of course, is something that motivates people to follow a health promoting life style. I have called my life style program F.I.G.H.T. It is based on Dr Kobayashi’s ten years of research where some ten thousand patients avoided death from cancer.
It proved that cancer level in our body invariably diminishes with the simple health promoting steps he developed, which lead to my developing the F.I.G.H.T. program. It is important that these steps are initiated before the lump/bump stage develops. This proves that all cancer tests have some potential benefit to motivate patients to improve their health but only if we can limit the damage that overly aggressive treatment can lead to, including unwarranted biopsies. Cancer is a systemic disease and attacking the prostate or whatever tissue seems to be the focus is not the answer.
Garry F. Gordon MD,DO,MD(H)
President, Gordon Research Institute
www.gordonresearch.com
Excerpt:
Study: PSA rise not good prostate cancer predictor
Updated Feb 24, 2011 5:58 PM |A rising PSA level isn’t such a good a predictor of prostate cancer after all, and can lead to many unnecessary biopsies, says a large new study.
Most men over 50 get PSA blood tests, but they’re hugely problematic. Too much PSA, or prostate-specific antigen, only sometimes signals prostate cancer is brewing — it also can mean a benign enlarged prostate or an infection. And screening often detects small tumors that will prove too slow-growing to be deadly. Yet there’s no sure way to tell in advance who needs aggressive therapy.
On the other hand, some men have cancer despite a “normal” PSA count of 4 or below. So for PSAs that are rising, yet still in the normal range, some guidelines urge doctors to consider a biopsy.
How quickly the PSA number rises is something “that patients and doctors worry a lot about,” said Dr. Andrew Vickers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. “Men show up here with a PSA of 2 and we say, ‘Why are you here?’ And they say, ‘Well, I used to be a 1 and my doctor’s worried. Am I going to die?'”
So Sloan-Kettering researchers studied whether considering PSA velocity adds value to the biopsy-or-not decision in those otherwise low-risk men — and concluded it doesn’t.
“This is a really important study,” said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, who wasn’t part of the research. “A lot of doctors are going to stop looking at a PSA rise of 1 and ordering biopsies.”
