hi davis - i'm sorry to hear your father's prostate cancer.  the 39.5
could be produced by infection, but since they've already confirmed the
fact he has pca, then i would have to say the 39,5 is probably due to
the pca instead.

they have found no relationship between BPH and prostate cancer.  you
can have BPH with no sign of cancer, but i guess the problem lies in the
fact that BPH and prostate cancer symptoms are so close that how can one
tell without the medical input.

given your father's age and psa number, i would take an educated guess
and say that he has had this condition for awhile.  it would surprise me
if his gleason would be over a 6 (3 + 3), but i'm not a doctor.  the
good news is that it is slow growing and he will probably be placed on
some type of hormone therapy.  

as a rule, he will not die from prostate cancer, and that is good news.
his quality of life will be good also.  my father did watchful waiting
and they waited until his cancer was at 288 before they acted.  and they
saw his numbers rise from over 40 to 288 in a year before they moved on
it.  and it took two years for it to get to 40.  so, your father is
ahead of the game right off the bat.  and for what it's worth, he died
from a heart attack and the tender age of 92.

hope this helps.

~ curtis

knowledge is power - growing old is mandatory - growing wise is optional

Yes, to all all your questions.

BHP will cause PSA to elevate.  BHP and PCa are not related (except by
sanguenity, I guess), but both can occur in the same organ and both will
cause PSA to rise.  As you learn more about PCa, you will learn that "Stage"
is an official significant term when dealing with PCa and it is not
dependent upon PSA.  So is "Gleason Score".  His doctor(s) will look at the
PSA, Stage, and Gleason and determine his better options.  Assuming the
doc(s) know of the BHP, they will likely give it less credance than usual.

Although BPH and PCa are supposedly unrelated, I often wonder
if some cases reported as BPH are actually cancer.  A doctor
does a biopsy, the lab doesn't spot any cancer, so they give the
diagnosis of BPH.  But was it really BPH, or did the biopsy just
happen not to hit the tumor area, or the lab just not see it in the
slides?

I understand that ten years ago biopsies were routinely done with
six needle cores.  Today they are routinely done with twelve, giving
twice as many chances for a hit if the cancer is small.  You'll see
a number of guys on this group reporting that cancer was found in
one core out of twelve.  There is presumably a 50% chance those
guys would have been missed with a six needle biopsy.

The real question for you is, what treatment makes sense?  Even
if some of the PSA is due to BPH, is it a cancer that will still
respond to a localized treatment like radiation, or is it already
spread?  The CT and bone scans should help with those questions.

Even if it has spread, there may be no serious symptoms for a couple
of years, and hormone therapy may delay that for a few more.  New
treatments may also be available by the end of that time.  So there
is a decent chance your Dad can live out his life without suffering
from this disease.

  Alan

Hi, Davis....
Yes, BPH can elevate PSA.  So can prostatitis.  Both are non-cancerous.
In the months before my biopsy that determined I *did* have prostate cancer,
my PSA fluctuated between 5.1 and 13.9.  Right before surgery, it was 8.1.
I will never know how much of that PSA was related to the cancer and how
much was related to the prostatitis and BPH that I had been dealing with.

Your dad's Gleason score and staging will be important to know.  Of course,
he will have options for treatment.  Most likely, he would be started on
hormone therapy to help curb the cancer.  He could also have external beam
radiation... or radiated seed implants.  At his age, I don't know that any
doctor would recommend surgery as an option.  He ill likely *NOT* die of
prostate cancer, in any case!!

Please keep us posted.... and feel free to ask more questions.

My best to your dad!
MikeH :)