I am hardly in a position to evaluate your case.  Your doctor should
know what he is doing.   Some doctors won't do routine PSA testing in
men your age, but a lot can depend on the individual.  Perhaps it makes
a difference if there is obstructive BPH, as seems true in your case.  A
sudden rise in PSA is also sometimes reason for concern. Also, it is
really general health and life expectancy that counts rather than age.
No one in my family has lived much past 80, but my wife's family
typically lives into the 90s and her grandmother reached 104.  You could
say that when I was diagnosed at age 67, that I just got in under the
wire for treatment on the life expectancy test.  On the other hand, I
had a Gleason 7=3+4 cancer, and many urologists consider that worth
treating even if they don't expect their patients to live 15 years or more.

In any case, with a Gleason 6 cancer and a PSA less than 10,  your
prospects of living out your life without facing metastatic prostate
cancer are pretty good at this point.   Good luck.

Will radiation do anything to help your BHP?  Sounds like you're in great shape for ignorning the PCa and moving on.

 Leonard
 I have been seeing a urologist because of an enlarged prostate. For the last
 year or so my PSA was in the 4 to 5 range. Because of my age (79) he said
 that range was not alarming. I had a PSA of 8.2 a few months ago and that's
 when my uro decided I should have a biopsy.

 I have BPH and Cancer.
 Biopsy 4/15/05

 T1c Gleason 6, 3+3,
 1/12 positive, localized,
 Age 79, Good health,
 Taking Proscar.
 TURP on 6/20/05

 My Urologists says it is better for me to have a TURP before having EBRT. Which is not yet scheduled.
 Turp + 3 ½  weeks, I believe I am progressing as expected. I will try to answer any question.
 Ben

 "Leonard Evens" <len@math.northwestern.edu> wrote in message news:Pd2dnTFdUPu6OETfRVn-oQ@comcast.com...
 >> George
 >> I am 79 years old, I will be 80 in 5 months.
 >
 > Does your doctor recommend routine screening for prostate cancer?
 >
 >> May I ask what your age is.
 >> Thanks
 >> Ben T
 >>
 >>
 >> "george conklin" <george@nxu.edu> wrote in message
 >> news:lGeCe.24230$eM6.19881@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
 >>
 >>>"G" <Son@notreal.ooo> wrote in message
 >>>news:siqid1d09c7dj7at4jh4nsitup1g521ur1@4ax.com...
 >>>
 >>>>80 Years old, Gleason 9, no metastasis to the bone
 >>>>
 >>>>My father was just diagnosed.
 >>>>
 >>>>Suggested treatment is castration (doctor's recommendation) or other
 >>>>hormone therapy.
 >>>>
 >>>>Can anyone just give me some random thoughts. Other possibilities?
 >>>>What to expect? Life expectancy?
 >>>>
 >>>>Thanks
 >>>>
 >>>
 >>>  At age 80, 100% of the male population can be diagnosed with PCa.  Why
 >>>was he tested?  Some doctors say they will test an 80-year-old only if he
 >>>brings with him BOTH parents!!!
 >>>
 >>
 >>
 >>

  Stop changing the subject.  I wrote that by age 80, we will all have PCa.
You wrote that took exception to that because what they found at age 80 was
somehow different.  It is not.  You say, "very different from a clinical
diagnosis."  And the point was that if you look, everyone is going to get a
clinical diagnosis by age 80.

 I just respond to the science group; cross postings are provided by the
original posters.

Here is the article you don't like:

"My one wish with prostate cancer," says Dr. Thomas Stamey, a veteran
researcher at Stanford University, "is that before a doctor does anything
aggressive, he would tell his patient that all men will develop the disease
eventually." He pauses to let the bad news sink in. "The good news," he
wants doctors to add, "is that the rate of dying from prostate cancer is
infinitesimal."

   Now, notice you said  infinitesimal is too small.  But he is considering
that if you look, you will give 100% of those 80 or up a PCa diagnosis.  So
if you add in all those over 80 into the diagnosis pool, you are going to
come up with "small."

Stamey has been in a reflective mood of late because of the growing
realization, by him and others, that the screening test he helped discover
is far less useful for detecting prostate cancer than many had once
believed. In 1987, a team led by Stamey found that high levels of
prostate-specific antigen (PSA) circulating in the blood were a strong
indication of prostate tumors.

Before then, the only way to detect prostate cancer was with a painful
biopsy, and this is still used to confirm the disease. But with a simple PSA
test , doctors thought they could weed out men who don't need the more
invasive procedure, as well as spot tumors at an earlier, more treatable
stage.

The test has proven a powerful draw: about half of all men over the age of
50 get annual PSA tests. Now, Stamey hopes that men will be open to the
older means of screening for prostate cancer.

"I don't think PSA adds very much," he says.

The End of the PSA Era?
These second thoughts stem from a troubling variety of evidence that
suggests widespread testing is possibly causing more harm than good.
Although death rates from prostate cancer are lower than they were before
PSA screening, these rates have also declined in countries where this type
of testing is not commonly used.

If one were to randomly biopsy men, as Dr. Wael Sakr of Wayne State
University did on a group who were accidentally killed on the streets of
Detroit, about 8 percent of those in their 20s would have prostate cancer,
with the rates steadily increasing as men age. Indeed, about 80 percent will
develop the disease by the age of 70.

Some of these tumors are clearly dangerous. But most are slow moving, and
many prostate cancer patients can go 20 years without any need for
treatment, according to a recent study led by Dr. Peter Albertson. With
widespread PSA screening picking up these relatively benign tumors, Stamey
fears that the tests are leading to unnecessary treatment and worry.

"I've been as guilty as anyone else," he says.

Not everyone is willing to give up on PSA screening quite yet.

"We know it's not a perfect test," says Jamie Bearse, a spokesperson for
National Prostate Cancer Coalition, which advocates annual PSA screening for
men 40 years and older. Bearse is hopeful that newer screening tests will
prove more discerning. In the meantime, he says, the PSA test is the best
early detection option men have. "They would rather know, than not know."

Normal vs. Abnormal PSA
Yet it is increasingly hard to determine even a broad risk prediction from
PSA testing. Traditionally, doctors used a PSA measurement of 4 as a key cut
off point: lower than 4 millimeters of PSA in the blood meant that men were
considered cancer free, whereas higher or equal to 4 suggested the need for
a biopsy to confirm the disease.

But looking at nearly 5,500 men who had a PSA test and then at least one
biopsy, researchers found this cutoff point often missed tumors or implied
that men had cancers that weren't in fact really there, according to recent
results published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Indeed, a PSA level of 4.1 millimeters accurately predicts only 20 percent
of prostate cancers and leads to false alarms about 6 percent of the time.
Lowering the threshold will detect more cancers, but at the price of causing
men to undergo biopsies for no reason or finding many benign tumors that
only need to be monitored. A PSA cutoff of 2.1, for example, would yield
false readings more than 85 percent of the time to catch only slightly more
than half of all tumors.

The authors of the study, led by Dr. Ian Thompson of the University of Texas
Health Science Center in San Antonio, call for a substantial "reeducation"
effort on the increasingly murky role of PSA. "It will be a challenge to the
medical community to change the long held notion that there is a 'normal'
PSA level," the authors write.

Researchers still hold out hope for measuring PSA velocity, the rise of PSA
over time that gives an indication if the tumor is growing. As an initial
detection tool, Stamey says that doctors should return to looking at
increasing age, along with a family history of the disease, as a way of
determining who may be at greater risk for prostate cancer and in need of a
biopsy to catch tumors early.

Other than that, he adds, "We have as much a way of predicting who will need
a biopsy based on looking at someone's eyes." Ongoing studies are continuing
to look at whether PSA testing saves lives, and the American Cancer Society
and other test supporters urge men to discuss the pros and cons of screening
with their doctors. But the creator of the PSA test is calling for the end.

"All men will develop a prostate cancer," says Stamey. "That's a given."

  You seem to disagree with the last statement and I can find no evidence
that Stamey is wrong.  That worries you.  Why?

On July17, Steve Kramer responded to George Conklin:

I'll agree that it's interesting to watch the two ".edu's" firing at
each other.

I do have a couple of questions:

(1) We know Leonard's academic credentials from earlier posts. What are
George's credentials? Please forgive me if the info has been posted
previously; I haven't seen it.

(2) Would George please enlighten us by specifying what he recommends
to alleviate the problems he perceives.

Regards,

Steve J

"The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to
safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices.  The
physician does not preach repentance; he offers absolution."
-- H.L. Mencken