Hi Greg,
Going back to your first post, my view is that Gleason 6 should very much still be called cancer because it is by definition, abnormal cells growing.
I feel this way because last Friday I got my biopsy results which were G6, grade 1 with only 1 core of 21 showing cancer. I’m 55 and was told that the preference of the medical team is AS probably for all the reasons covered in the various replies above BUT my MRI showed two areas of concern, one Pi-RAD 3, the other Pi-RAD 4. The one cancerous core was in area 3.
I have not yet received the TNM score nor had access to the MRI report or pathology and there was no discussion about them during my results meeting. Nor the % of cancer in the core or the location.
From my perspective therefore, as things stand, either the MRI grade was wrong or the biopsy failed to pick up any of the cancer that is “likely” to exist in area 4. If the latter, then my current 3 & 3 grade 1 based on just 1 core, could be higher and that could alter the team’s recommendation for AS.
The issue I think is that perhaps anything with a score of 6 is over half way between 1 and 10 and yet we are told that the prognosis for a 6 grade 1 is nowhere near half as serious (in the short term at least) as say a G8. That is I gather one of the factors behind the introduction of the CPG score/grade. With all of the public messaging around cancers generally being of the “find it early, can do something about it” type, it is highly counter-intuitive to then go along with being told that the best thing to do is just to monitor it, especially when my father has PCa (albeit it only surfaced when he was 80) also had lung cancer which my brother has too and which has spread to secondary brain cancer plus my mother died from oesophageal cancer aged 63.
Maybe I am over sensitive to the C word given family experience and maybe my Specialist Nurse or another member of my medical team will be able to explain things fully and give me confidence that my biopsy result is accurate but, for now, I would not want my “pussy cat” cancer being re-defined when the balance of probability (subject to getting the full information that I should have been given in the results meeting) seems to be a false negative is involved.
Jon