Interpretation of PSA levels after radical therapy for prostate cancer

Abstract

Prostate‐specific antigen plays a role in active surveillance and postoperative monitoring of prostate cancer patients. The authors discuss PSA screening, and consider some of the problems involved in interpretation of PSA levels after radical prostatectomy, radical radiotherapy and brachytherapy. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons.

18F-rhPSMA-7 PET for the Detection of Biochemical Recurrence of Prostate Cancer After Radical Prostatectomy

“…A PSA level of greater than 0.2 ng/mL is the current definition of BCR of prostate cancer after radical prostatectomy (16)(17)(18). A rising PSA level after radical prostatectomy usually precedes a clinically detectable recurrence by years (19).…”

Assessment of a multi-state system under a shock model

“…It should be noted that the cutoff value 0.2 is not fixed, and several studies have used different values. If the PSA increases to >4 ng/ml, for example, there is a chance the tumor may have become locally advanced/advanced, at which point hormone therapy is the only option [5]. The model proposed in this paper can be used in monitoring PSA levels after surgical treatment of a prostate cancer patient.…”

“…That is seriously considered and measured after prostatectomy (surgical removal of the prostate) in follow-up visits. After radical prostatectomy, a PSA of 0.2 ng/ml (nanograms per milliliter) may signal a recurrence of cancer and salvage radiotherapy may be recommended [5]. It should be noted that the cutoff value 0.2 is not fixed, and several studies have used different values.…”

Reliability assessment of system under a generalized run shock model

“…It is easy to see that the lifetime of a type 1 system is a summation of i.i.d. continuous phasetype variables, which can be computed from (2), while the lifetimes of type 2 and type 3 systems can be calculated from (6). However, the computation in (2) is complicated as it includes a high-dimensional matrix product, and the assumption that all the variables in the summation must be i.i.d.…”

“…However, in some practical problems, a single threshold is not enough to distinguish the severity of damage caused by the shocks. Goonewardene et al [6] studied an applied problem in the healthcare management area, where prostate-specific antigen levels in the treatment of patients was divided into three levels with two thresholds. The choice of therapy was determined by the type of situation.…”